on," he discovered with a weariness that immediately took the
fascination out of the discovery that one day he would feel it
when he found out how much love there was in it-"from now
on I want things that are equal to each other, and not different
from each other. You talk too much about things that shine; and
yet there's a core that doesn't shine. And that's what I want. I
want the extreme beauty of monotony. There's something that's
dark and doesn't glow-and that's what counts. You bore me
with your fear, because even that shines. From now on I want
things that are equal to one another." And she still came around
to say that she was disappointed . . .
"You're afraid," he said, uselessly using some sort of dignity
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
and trying, with definite courtesy, to maintain the tone of the
woman's abstract polemic which, in the sunlight, had trouble
being sharp.
The lady had trouble believing what she had heard :
"Af ra 'd
1 ?. I. "
Afraid? Her? Her impulse was to laugh, as if laughter could
have answered the absurd. Afraid? She shook her head in disbelief. She, who ran that farm with the strength of a man? She, who gave orders to that man standing there, afraid neither of
herself nor of him? She, who had quietly fought against the
drought and had conquered it! She, who knew how to wait for it
to rain. Afraid? She, who walked about in her dirty boots and
with her face exposed without being afraid of never being loved.
She, who courageously went through the inheritance from her
father to keep that farm functioning, without even knowing
why, courageously waiting for the day when that place would be
the best in the region, and then she would be able to extend her
fences. Afraid?
Her whole body revolted against the man's lack of understanding and the insult of the word; her whole being got ready for a gesture that would make her own indignation explode, but
none seemed strong enough to her. Afraid ! She looked at him
surprised, bitter. What did he know about her, that man? How
could that man who was looking into her face now without any
fear ever understand her great courage. She perceived for the
first time how stupid his face was. From the taut forehead one
could guess at the difficulty of thought; there was a painful effort
showing in the face of that man. And she shook her head, bitter,
ironically. Since she had known that he was an engineer, she had
never really thought about his intelligence. But when one looked
at him nakedly, how stubborn and crude he was ! The man's face
had that sleepwalking perseverance of stupid people.
"Afraid? Yes." he said patiently as if he were talking to a
child.
The repeated insult made her tremble, and this time her
whole being got ready to strike back with an insult. Afraid, her
. her mouth twisted with sarcasm.
The Apple in the Dark
But instead of that, the features of her face suddenly gave
way. She could not take any more. Afraid? Yes. Afraid? Yes. She
remembered how being afraid had been the solution. She remembered how once she had humbly accepted fear like someone kneeling with his head lowered to receive baptism, and how her
courage from then on had been one of living with fear. Afraid,
her? And suddenly, as if she were regurgitating her soul, she
shouted with the pride of her fifty mute years :
"Afraid, yes ! What do you think that means? Afraid, yes.
Listen then and take it if you can; take it if you're not afraid.
I've already been afraid. I took care of my old father over the
years, and when he died I was all alone . . .
" The woman
stopped herself. When her father had died she had suddenly
been all by herself and on her own, and with the clumsy impulse
of those who start late and no longer have the skill for it, she had
wanted for the first time to try what she called "living," -which,
in a first and uncertain step toward glory, would be to go by
herself to a hotel and stay there all alone and concentrate on
herself and have the highest idea of herself, like a monk in his
cell; and that would be the furtive way that she would make her
first obeisance to . . . to what? "I went to be by myself and to
concentrate;" she said with pride, "and I left everybody and I
took a ferry with my suitcase. But once on the boat, once I was
on the boat I began to become that awful person I had recognized, that ordeal, that almost good but dangerous feeling.
As soon as I had stepped on that boat that was rocking wildly
everything touched me and made me sad, curious, alive, full of
curiosity-but wasn't that just what I had wanted? Wasn't that
just what I'd gone to look for? It was, but why was it that I
refused to realize that it was happening? Why did I look at
everything with my head held high, making believe? It was still
afternoon when I got to the island-my heart contracted with
fright when I saw the big old hotel with high-ceilinged rooms
and flies in the dining room, and people relaxing on the terrace
and looking at me as I passed among them and begged their
pardon; what was lacking there was the protection there is in the
smallness of a cell, and I had made a great mistake. I didn't
( 2 8 5 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
know anyone on the terrace and I didn't let any of them guess
that it made my heart beat faster. I left my bag in my room, but
my impulse was to get on the ferry and go back; but that would
have been failure! Had I gone there for some reason to endure
what was happening to me, since that was not the life that I had
wanted? And if I couldn't accept it, was it just because it was
more naked than I had expected-it would be defeat and desertion. But very much stronger than the shame of running away was the anticipation of what a night all alone in that room
would be. Then I went downstairs and without any shame I
inquired about the schedule of the ferries going back, and my
horror was confirmed : they told me, 'Only the next morning.'
Then I calmly went out of the hotel, but outside the air was
bright and clear; it was afternoon, and the blue sea made the
most delicate line against the horizon that I have ever seen. The
beauty was so painful, and I was so alive; and the only way that I
had learned to be alive was to feel myself so helpless. I was alive,
but it was as if there were no answer to being alive. Then I
quickly went back to the hotel, driven away by the light of the
beach, and among strangers I gobbled down my meal with great
courage. After dinner I tried to take a walk at night outside the
hotel, because hadn't that been what I had planned? Wasn't
that an encounter with day itself and with night itself? But
outside the hotel the whole beach was glowing in the dark.
Beautiful, all white with so much sand, with the dark sea-but
the foam, I remember that the foam was white in the dark, and
I thought that the foam looked like a piece of lace, there was no
moon, but the foam was white like a piece of lace in the dark.
Then I hurried back to my room and quickly turned into the
daughter of an aged father because it was only as a daughter that
had I known calm and composure, and only then did I realize
the security I had lost with the death of my father; and I resolved that from then on I wanted to be only what I had always been before, only that. I put on a clean starched nightgown
because that was a pleasure I was accustomed to, and I combed
my hair for a long time because those were the habits through
( 2 8 6 )
The Apple in the Dark
which I understood myself and knew myself, and I smoothed my
hair so much with the brush that I managed to make myself a
thing that was neither raw nor exposed. I was full of flattery for
myself; I was treating myself with ceremony and trying to see if I
could reach some level where I would feel comradeship with the
frightened coward I was being, and for whom I had such
repugnance, but I pretended that everything was perfect. I even
sighed comfortably in bed with the book in my hand, the book
that I had never thought I would open on the island. I knew
that I was not reading, but I never let myself be convinced that I
was making believe; and it had not been reading on an island
that I had come to find there. I tried to ignore the fact that God
was giving me exactly what I had asked Him for and that 1-1
was saying 'No.' I was pretending that I did not understand that
I had built up a whole hope in what was happening to me at
last, but that there I was with my glasses on and the open book,
as if I were so much in love that I could only shout 'No.' But I
also knew that if in that very moment I did not pick up the calm
thread of my previous life, my balance would never come back
and my things would never be recognized by me. And that's why
I pretended to be reading. But I could hear the ocean waves; I
could hear, I could hear! It was then that all at once all the
lights in the hotel went out. Just like that, all at once, without
any sound, without any warning, nothing. Only the next day did
I learn that at nine o'clock at night the lights were turned off to
save electricity. The lights had all gone out, and I was left with
the open book in my hand; I was left in the dark as I had never
been before. Only last night was I left in that dark for the
second time in my life-like that, with that simple way of being
in the dark. I had never been in it, and I had never been in the
dark by the sea. It was very dark as if I was trying to find the
hotel and did not know where it was; the only thing I could
touch was the book in my hand. The fear, the fear that you
accuse me of, would not let me make one single movement, but
afterwards it became surprise-then there burst forth what I had
only barely kept back until that instant-the beauty of the
( 2 8 7 )
T H E A P P L E I N T H E D A R K
beach, the fine line of the horizon, the solitude to which I had
come of my own free will, the rocking of the boat that I had
thought was pleasant, and also the fear of the intensity of joy
that I can reach-and unable to lie any more, I cried as I prayed
in the dark, praying as I said 'Never this again, oh Lord, never let
me be so bold, never let me be so happy. Take away my courage
for living forever; don't ever let me allow myself to go so deep
into myself, don't ever let me give myself grace, so pitilessly,
because I don't want grace, because I'd rather die without ever
having seen it rather than see it just once! Because God in His
goodness allows, you know. He allows and He counsels people to
be cowards and protect themselves. His favorite children are
those who dare; but He's strict with someone who dares, and
He's benevolent with someone who doesn't have the courage to
look straight ahead and He blesses those abject people who are
careful not to go too far into rejoicing and into the search for
joy. Disappointed, He blesses those who don't have the courage.
He knows that there are people who can't live with the happiness there is inside of them, and then He gives them a surface to live on, and He gives them a sadness. He knows that there are
people who have to pretend, because beauty is arid. Why is
beauty so arid? And then I said to myself, 'Be afraid, Vit6ria,
because being afraid is salvation.' Because things can't be looked
at face on, nobody's that strong, only people who damn themselves are that strong. But for us joy has to be like a smothered star in our hearts, joy has to be just a secret, joy has to be
something like a glow that people never, never should let escape.
You feel a splinter and you don't know where it came from;
that's the way joy should be. You shouldn't know why, you
should feel something like : 'But what's the matter with me?' -
and not know. Even when it touches something, that thing will
glow because of the great secret that was snuffed out-I was
afraid, because who am I without contention? When I was
sitting in the ferry the next day I thought that I had died. But as
if before I had died I had received communion."
Martim was pale. Oh, what he would have given to insult
that naked and shameless face.
The Apple in the Dark
But as if both of them had understood each other beyond
the words, the woman was not offended by what he had said.
Nor did he repeat it, as if he really had not opened his mouth.
He turned his eyes away only because he did not wish to look at
that pained face. And she, she only sighed. They were tired as if
they had been doing some kind of violent exercise. In some way
the woman's stupid outburst had been good for them, because
inexplicably, besides being tired, the two of them were now
tranquil.
Besides, nothing seemed to have happened. There is nothing
so destructive for spoken words as a sun that keeps on burning.
They remained silent, giving themselves time to forget. By a
tacit pact they would forget that rather ugly thing which had
happened. Neither of them was young and they had had some
experience. A person has the nobility not to notice certain
things, and has pity on us and forgets, and has the tact not to
have noticed-if one wanted to stop a moment of comprehension from crystalizing us and making our life something else.
Neither of them was young, and they were prudent. So then,
after the outburst they remained silent, as if nothing had happened, because no one can live in fright and no one could live on the basis of having vomited or of having seen someone
vomit; those were things that one does not think too much
about, those were the facts of a life.
The lady wiped the sweat from her face and took a quick
look at that narrow head, that curly hair. There had been restored once more to his face the calm human stupidity, that opaque and obtuse stolidity which is our great strength. They
both looked into the emptiness of each other's eyes. Without
pain, one seemed to be asking the other: "Who a
re you?" As
they looked at each other, the basic one-to-the-otherness was not
caught by them, and yet it was once more with that principal
thing that they were fighting. Until, out of emptiness, their eyes
began to fill up and become individual, and the one was now no
longer imprisoned by absorption in the other. Then they looked
at each other frankly, with nothing to say-only that; extreme
( 2 8 9)
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
frankness. Then they averted their eyes without any pain, in
common agreement, knowingly; and again they waited an instant for the frankness which never has any words, to have time to go away, so they could go on living.
Without insisting she said calmly, as if they had just had a
friendly conversation, "Naturally, if that night on the island I
had known everything that was going to happen, I would have
taken a chance on being more unhappy. But at such a time, one
always thinks it's forever. And it happened too that at that
moment I didn't understand that I was experiencing exactly
what I'd gone to look for; I didn't recognize it completely, and I
thought I was mistaken. Naturally, after that, I became more
careful. I knew then that you can't approach things directly the
way I had. Never directly," she said, as if it were a formula. "I
also want to tell you that I was afraid, yes, but not because I was
sorry for myself. I'm never sorry for myself," she said without
vanity.
And, by God, she wasn't.
"It was only a matter of finding out that one doesn't approach things directly," she said then in a conciliatory way.
"And I learned that all by myself. All by myself," she added
with a certain simplicity.
"Why didn't you ever think to ask for somebody's help?" he
asked, bored, without really knowing what he was saying.
"Don't you understand," she said, irritated again, "that I'm
not capable of asking? That I need so much that nobody can
give it to me? In that case, you probably don't see that I would
ask for more than they could give me." In her excitement she
forgot that she had no right to be annoyed, because if the man
was listening to her, it was only because he was doing her the
favor or because she had obliged him to listen; and she forgot