The Apple in the Dark Read online

  perhaps, along with the idiotic hope that some regeneration has

  come about? But then we see that it will be just another introspective novel like this, and that Martim will continue on with more illusion and disillusion, Don Quixote as masochist, the

  human condition as gathered together to form society.

  The title is a kind of symbol of all that goes to make up the

  final theme of the book, and what message we are left with,

  hopeless as it may be, is summed up in it. The second time the

  notion is mentioned, it comes more clearly as part of the litany

  recited between Martim and the image of his father, his progenitor, toward the end of the book. We understand then why Miss Lispector has stressed the motif of darkness so much, perhaps

  why it is an apple, the popularly accepted fruit of the !ree ?f

  knowledge. The apple can be felt and grasped and recognized in

  the dark, but there is always the danger and the fear that we may

  (xv)

  I N T R O D UC T ION

  not have a good grip on it and may drop it. In this way the story

  ends on what could be a hopeless note. Adam and Eve knew

  what it was and bit into it, becoming human, with all of the

  tribulations entailed. Here there is the danger that we may drop

  it and go on being frustrated, even though its attainment means

  a new frustration. In this way the story seems to be telling us

  that there is consolation in holding on firmly to what we can

  recognize around us in the darkness of our ignorance, but it also

  makes us wonder whether we shall be any better off for it.

  �Partl

  HOW AMAN

  IS MADE

  Chapter1

  THIS TALE begins in March on a night as dark as night can get

  when a person is asleep. The peaceful way in which time was

  passing could be seen in the high passage of the moon across the

  sky. Then later on, much deeper into night, the moon too

  disappeared.

  1bere was nothing now to distinguish Martim's sleep from

  the slow and moonless garden. When a man slept so deeply, he

  came to be the same as that tree standing over there or the hop

  of a toad in the darkness.

  Some of the trees there had grown with rooted leisure until

  they reached the top of their crowns and the limit of their

  destiny. Others had burst out of the earth in quick tufts. The

  flower beds had an order about them that was concentrating in a

  great struggle to achieve some kind of symmetry. Although this

  order was discernible from up on the balcony of the large hotel,

  a person standing at the level of the flower beds could not make

  it out. The driveway, detailed in small cut stones, lay between

  the flower beds.

  Off in one tum of the drive the Ford had been parked for so

  long a time that it was already part of the great interwoven

  garden and its silence.

  By day, however, the countryside was different, and the

  crickets, vibrating hollow and hard, left the entire expanse open,

  shadowless. All the while there was that dry smell of crumbling

  stone that daytime has in the country. Yet on that very day

  Martim had been standing on the balcony, uselessly obedient, so

  as not to miss anything that was going on. But not very much

  was going on. Before one's eyes reached the beginning of the

  road, which disappeared into the dust suspended in the sunlight,

  ( 3 )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  there was only the garden to be contemplated, comprehensible

  and symmetrical from up on the balcony, tangled and confused

  when one became part of it-and the man had been playing for

  two weeks now with what he could remember of it, carefully

  nurturing it, saving it for eventual use. For any other kind of

  attention, however, the day was untouchable, like a point designed upon the point itself. The voice of the cricket was the very body of the cricket, and it told nothing. The only advantage

  of daytime was that in the bright light the car was becoming a

  little beetle that could easily get to the highway.

  But while the man was sleeping, the car was becoming

  enormous in the way that an idle machine is gigantic. And at

  night the garden was filled with the secret weaving that darkness

  lives on, work whose existence is suddenly made clear by fireflies.

  A certain dampness also betrayed the secret of the work. And

  night was an element in which life, by becoming strange, became recognizable.

  It was on that night that the motor of the car vibrated and

  reached out to the empty and sleeping hotel. The darkness

  slowly began to move.

  Instead of waking up and listening directly, Martim passed

  over to the other side of darkness through an even deeper sleep,

  and there he heard the sound the wheels made as they spat up

  the dry sand. Then his name was spoken, clearly and cleanly, in

  some way pleasant to hear. It was the German who had spoken.

  In his sleep Martim enjoyed the sound of his own name. And

  then the violent cry of a bird whose wings had been frightened

  into immobility, the way fright can seem to be joy.

  When it became silent within the silence again, Martim was

  sleeping even farther away. And yet in the depths of his sleep

  something had echoed with difficulty, trying to organize itself.

  Until the sound of the car in all of its finest details was repeated

  in his memory, without any sense, and free from the inconvenience of having to be understood. The idea of the car alerted a soft warning that he did not immediately understand. But now a

  vague alarm had spread out into the world, and its center of

  How a Man Is Made

  radiation was the man himself: "So me, then," his body

  thought, touched with pity. He remained lying down, remotely

  enjoying it.

  The man had arrived at the hotel two weeks before, finding

  it in the middle of the night with almost no surprise. Exhaustion

  makes everything like that possible. It was an empty hotel, with

  only the German and the servant, if he was a servant. And for

  two weeks, while Martim was getting his strength back in almost

  uninterrupted sleep, the car had remained parked in one of the

  driveways, its wheels buried in the sand-so motionless, so

  resistant to the man's habit of incredulity and his care not to let

  himself be deceived that Martim had finally ended up feeling

  that it was at his disposal.

  But the truth is that even on that night when he had

  staggered in-when he had at last let himself drop half dead

  onto a real bed with real sheets-even then the car had represented the security of new flight, in case the two men should seem to be too curious about the identity of the guest. And he

  had fallen asleep confidently as if nobody would ever be able to

  wrest from his firm grasp the imaginary rim of a steering wheel

  as he clutched the sheet in his hands.

  The German, however, had not asked him anything, and the

  servant, if that was what he was, had scarcely glanced at him.

  Their reluctance to take him in had not come from any distrust

  but from the fact that the hotel had not been a hotel for some

  time-ever since it had be
en fruitlessly put up for sale, the

  German had explained to him. And so as not to cause suspicion,

  Martim had nodded his head, smiling. Before the new highway

  had been built, cars had passed by there, and the isolated big

  house could not have been better situated as an obligatory

  stopping place for the night. When the new highway had been

  put through thirty miles away, it detoured all the cars that used

  to pass, and the whole town had died. So there was no reason

  any more for anyone to have use for a hotel in a place that had

  been turned over to the winds. But in spite of the apparent

  indifference of the two men Martim's obstinate quest for secur-

  ( 5 )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  ity became tied to that car over which the spiders too had

  executed their perfect aerial work, which had been tranquilized

  by all of its varnished immobility.

  That was the car that had uprooted itself with a hoarse

  sound in the middle of the night.

  In the silence which was once more intact, the man now

  stared stupidly at the invisible ceiling, which in the darkness was

  as high as the sky. Stretched out on his back upon the bed, he

  tried with an effort of gratuitous pleasure to reconstruct the

  sound of the wheels, for he did not feel pain, but pleasure in a

  general way. He could not see the garden from his bed. A little

  mist was coming in through the open Venetian blinds, and the

  man could tell that it was there from the smell of damp cotton

  and from a certain physical yearning for happiness that fog

  induces. It had only been a dream, then. Skeptical, however, he

  got up.

  In the darkness he could see nothing from the balcony, and

  he could not even guess the symmetry of the flower beds. A few

  splotches darker than the darkness itself showed the probable

  location of the trees. The garden remained as nothing but an

  effort of memory, and the man stared quietly, sleepily. Here and

  there a firefly made the darkness even vaster.

  Having forgotten about the dream that had drawn him out

  onto the balcony, the man's body found that it was a pleasant

  feeling to sense itself in a healthy upright position. The air was

  in suspension, and the dark position of the leaves was little

  changed. He let himself stand there, then, docile, bewildered,

  with the succession of unoccupied rooms behind him. Those

  empty rooms multiplied themselves until they disappeared off to

  where the man could no longer see anything more. Martim

  sighed inside his long waking sleep. Without too much insistence he tried to grasp the notion of the rooms farthest away, as if he himself had grown too large and had spread out too much,

  and for some reason that he had already forgotten-for some

  obscure reason-it had become essential to retreat so that he

  could think or perhaps feel. But he could not get himself to do

  ( 6 )

  How a Man Is Made

  it, and it was very pleasant. So he stayed there, with the courteous

  air of a man who has been hit over the head. Until-just as

  when a clock stops ticking and only thus makes us aware that it

  had been ticking before-Martim perceived the silence and his

  own presence within the silence. Then by means of a very

  familiar lack of comprehension the man at last began to be

  himself in an indistinct sort of way.

  Then things began to get reorganized, beginning with him:

  the darkness was beginning to be understood, branches were

  slowly taking shape under the balcony, shadows dividing up into

  flowers, undefined as yet. With their edges hidden by the quiet

  lushness of the plants, the flower beds were outlined, full and

  soft. The man grunted approvingly. With some difficulty he had

  just recognized the garden, which at intervals during those two

  weeks of sleep had constituted his irreducible vision.

  It was at that moment that a faint moon passed out of a

  cloud in great silence, silently spread itself over the calm stones,

  and silently disappeared into the darkness. The moonlit face of

  the man turned then toward the drive where the Ford ought to

  be standing motionless.

  But the car had disappeared.

  The man's entire body suddenly woke up. With a sharp

  glance his eyes covered the whole darkness of the garden-and

  without a sign of warning he wheeled around toward his room

  with the soft leap of a monkey. Nothing was moving, however,

  in the cavity of the room, which had become enormous in the

  darkness. The man stood breathing heavily, alert and uselessly fierce, with his hands held in front of him against attack. But the silence of the hotel was the same as that of

  night. And without visible limits the room prolonged the darkness of the garden with the same exhalation. To wake himself up the man rubbed his eyes several times with the back of one hand

  while keeping the other one free for defense. His new sensibility

  was of no use. In the darkness his wide-open eyes could not even

  see the walls.

  It was as if he had been set down alone in the middle of a

  ( 7 )

  T H E

  A P P L E

  I N T H E

  D A R K

  field. And as if he had finally remembered a long dream in which

  a hotel, now broken up in pieces on the empty ground, had

  figured, a car imagined only through desire, and-above all-as

  if the reason for a man to be all expectant in a place was also a

  form of expectancy.

  All that he had left of reality was the wisdom that had made

  him take a leap in vague defense, the instinct that was now leading him to calculate with unexpected lucidity that if the German had gone to turn him in, it would take some time for him to get

  there and return with the police.

  Which still left him free temporarily-unless the servant had

  been assigned to watch him. And in that case the servant, if

  that is what he was, would at this very moment be outside the

  door of that very room with his ear alert to the slightest movement on the part of the guest.

  That is what he was thinking. And when he stopped his

  reasoning, which he had reached with the malleability an invertebrate uses to become smaller in order to slip away, Martim plunged into the same previous absence of reason and the same

  obtuse impartiality, as if nothing had anything to do with him

  and as if the species would take care of him. Without looking

  back, guided by a slippery adroitness of movement, he began to

  climb down the balcony by placing his unexpectedly flexible feet

  on the outcroppings of the bricks. In his attentive remoteness

  the man could smell, as if he would never forget it, the malevolent odor of the broken ivy near his face. Now only his spirit was alert, and it could not distinguish between what was and what

  was not important, and he gave the same scrupulous consideration to every operation.

  With a soft jump that made the garden gasp as it held its

  breath, he found himself right in the middle of a flower bed,

  which ruffled up and then closed down. With his body alert the

  man waited for the message of his jump to be transmitted from

  secret echo to secret echo, unti
l it would be transformed into

  distant silence. His thud would end by breaking on the side of

  some mountain. No one had taught the man to have that

  ( 8 )

  How a Man Is Made

  intimacy with things that happen at night, but a body knows.

  He waited a while longer, until nothing was happening. Only

  then did he carefully feel for the glasses in his pocket. They were

  intact. He sighed carefully and finally looked around. The night

  was delicately vast and dark.

  Chapter 2

  THE MAN had walked for miles, leaving the big house farther and

  farther behind. He tried to walk in a straight line, and sometimes he would halt for a moment and grasp cautiously at the air. Since he was walking in darkness, he could not even guess in

  which direction he had headed when he had left the hotel

  behind. What guided him in the darkness was his simple intention of walking in a straight line. The man might as well have been a Negro, for all the use he got from the lightness of his

  skin; and the only awareness of who he was, came from the

  sensation he felt in himself of the movements he himself was

  making.

  He was fleeing with the meekness of a slave. A certain

  gentleness had taken hold of him, modified only by the observation of his own submission and the fact that in some way he was guiding it. No thought upset his steady and now unconscious

  march, unless it was the hazy idea that maybe he was walking in

  circles, along with the disconcerting possibility that he would

  find himself once more alongside the walls of the hotel.

  As always, along with the ground his feet were putting

  behind him, there was the darkness. He had already been walking for hours; this he could deduce from his feet, heavy with fatigue. Only when daylight would start to glow and dissipate

  the mist would he be able to tell where the horizon was. Since

  the darkness still seemed to stick so much to his uselessly

  opened eyes, he finally came to the conclusion that he had fled

  from the hotel not in the early morning but in the middle of the

  night. He had that great empty space of a blind man inside of

  him, and he kept on going forward.

  As he had no need for eyes now, he experimented by keeping

  them shut as he walked, because he wanted to take the over-all

  precaution of trying to economize in every way he could. With