The Apple in the Dark Page 3

  ( l 0 )

  How a Man Is Made

  his eyes closed he got the feeling that he was circling himself in

  some mad way, and it was not entirely disagreeable.

  As the man was walking along he could feel in his nostrils

  that acute lack of smell so peculiar to the purest of atmospheres,

  and something that holds itself aloof from other fragrances that

  could be smelled; and he was guided by that, as if his only

  mission were to find the clearest depths of air. But his feet took

  on that age-old fear of maybe stepping on some moving thinghis feet could feel the suspicious softness of things that take advantage of the darkness as the base of their existence. His feet

  brought him in contact with the means of surrender and of

  being able to be molded, and this is where one enters the night's

  worst phase : its permissiveness. He could not tell where he was

  stepping, and only through his shoes, as they became a means of

  communication, did he sense the doubtfulness of earth.

  There was nothing for the man to do but wait for the first

  glow to show him a path. Until that time he could go to sleep on

  the ground which, made more distant by the darkness, seemed

  unattainable. Danger was no longer a goad, and the sagacity

  born of it would now be but a shackle and had disappeared. And

  once more he was lulled by a soft stupefaction. The ground felt

  so far away that as he abandoned his body, he could feel something like a fall through a vacuum. He scarcely touched the earth, which quivered beneath his feet and then all at once

  became resistant to them in hard and stable folds like the roof of

  a horse's mouth. The man stretched out his legs and put down

  his head. Now that he was quiet, the air took on the sharpness

  and pain of its utter cleanliness. The man was no longer sleepy,

  but in the darkness he could not tell what to do with this great

  wakefulness. Besides, it made no sense.

  By that time he had become used to the strange music heard

  at night, fashioned from the possibility that things will chirp and

  from the soft rub of silence against silence. It was a lament

  without sadness. The man was in the heart of Brazil. And the

  silence was enjoying itself. But if softness was the way in which

  the night was heard, for night the softness was its own sharp

  sword, one could shroud the night in all that softness. He re-

  ( 1 1 )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  THE

  DARK

  fused to be bewitched by the joy he felt in the softness; he

  guessed that for miles and miles farther the darkness knew about

  his presence. He stayed alert, therefore, and kept nocturnal

  messages under his perfect control.

  Several times he tried to find a more comfortable position.

  He took impersonal care of himself, as if he were a bundle. But

  underneath there was the definitive earth, and above, the only

  star, and the man felt he was awake because only these two

  things were awake in the darkness. With each of his movements

  his face or his hands would come upon something that, when

  pushed, would return to strike him softly. He felt with his wise

  fingers; it was a branch.

  And then an instant later and all at once sleep came over

  him in a most unexpected position : one of his hands protected

  his eyes, while the other held back the harsh foliage.

  The man slept wakefully for hours. Just the hours needed for

  the formation of a thought, whatever it was, for he could no

  longer reach himself except in the perception of sleep. The

  moment he had closed his eyes, the vast and inarticulate idea

  began taking shape-and everything worked so perfectly that

  without pause and without having to retreat for correction it

  filled the sleep he needed to help him think. While he was

  asleep, he did not use up what little he had become but drew on

  something such as his race as a man, something indistinct and

  satisfactory. Out of that thing fashioned from a grunt he drew a

  lot: his mouth was fat with good and nourishing saliva. So when

  the last step toward his future was over, Martim stirred upon the

  hardness of the ground. He had not opened his eyes yet; but as

  he felt his own sluggishness, he recognized himself and reluctantly understood that he was awake.

  The great weight of day was actually bearing down upon his

  delicate eyelids, and he already felt the pain of it.

  But with a feeling of mistrust that had no intelligible motive, he evidently found it more prudent to communicate with his situation by means of touch : with his eyes shut he slowly

  moved his fingers along the ground, and in a promising sign,

  which he did not understand but which he approved of, it

  ( l 2)

  How a Man Is Made

  seemed less cold and less compact to him. With this basic

  assurance he finally opened his eyes.

  And a brutal clearness blinded him as if he had received a

  salty sea-wave in the face.

  Dizzy, with his mouth open, that man was sitting like a child

  in the middle of a wasteland that reached in all directions as far

  as the eye could see. It was a dry and stupid light. And he was

  sitting like a doll fastened down right in the midst of that thing

  which was beating down on him.

  The place in which he found himself was much less confusing than his drowsy feet had imagined in the darkness. His body was restless and could not tell whether or not it ought to feel

  pleasure in that discovery. He cautiously checked the few trees

  scattered about in the distance. The endless ground was reddish

  and dry. It was not a case of brush-land, as he had imagined

  from the branch that had struck him in the face. He had just

  happened to fall asleep beside one of the rare bushes in all that

  open country.

  Sitting there he still kept a watchful eye out; although

  silence may have seemed to be a natural part of darkness, he had

  not counted on the vehement muteness of the sun. He had

  always felt that the sun had voices. He did not move, therefore,

  so as not to startle whatever it might have been. It was a silence

  as if something were going to happen beyond a man's perception; but the few trees were swaying, and the bugs had already disappeared.

  Keeping in mind his own limitations which gave him as

  much defense as a rabbit, he waited with his head lifted up, as if

  a position of disinterest would render him invisible. Nobody had

  taught him that, either. But in two weeks he had learned the

  way a creature does not think and does not get involved, and is

  still completely there. Then, with a pettiness born of prudence

  he began to look around, almost without moving his head, just

  moving it a little back, imperceptively, and so enlarged his field

  of vision.

  And what Martim saw was an extended plain slowly rising. A

  long way off a gentle slope began, which from its outlines

  ( 1 3 )

  TH E

  A P P L E IN

  TH E

  D A R K

  promised to descend into a yet invisible valley. And where the

  sun's silence stopped, there was that elevation cushioned with

&
nbsp; goldness, barely discernible among the mists or low-hanging

  clouds-maybe the man had not dared put on his glasses. He

  could not tell if it was a mountain or just a shining cloud.

  Then, with the assurance that because of the distance nothing sudden would happen, the man began quickly to cast his eyes about him in a more personal way.

  In the calm expanse a bush here and there stuffed with the

  sun's final immobility. A few rigid trees were scattered about.

  Every so often a large rock was sticking up perpetually.

  Then the man relaxed his body : no danger. Only a peaceful

  and loyal extension of space that followed its own plane. And no

  traps-unless the short, hard shadow dug in alongside everything

  placed there. But there was no danger. It was really beyond

  imagination that this place could have a name, or for anyone to

  know about it. It was just great and open and inexpressive space

  where on their own account rocks and more rocks were sticking

  up. And that energetic silence which had alarmed him was

  nothing but the other face of silence. Even then, with open

  frankness, both the clearness and the silence were turning their

  eyes up toward the sky.

  The silence of the sun was so complete that his useless

  hearing tried to divide it into imaginary sectors, as in a map, so

  that he could grasp it gradually. But then, after the first sector,

  the man began to roll off into the infinite, which startled him; a

  warning. As he became more modest, his hearing tried only to

  calculate where the end of the silence might be : houses? some

  woods? and what could that distant splotch really be-a mountain, or just the darkness created by the accumulation of distances? His body ached.

  But getting on his feet the man unexpectedly regained the

  whole stature of his own body. This automatically gave him a

  certain arrogance, as if on getting up he had created the wasteland. And despite his sloping shoulders he felt that he was in control of the expanse and ready to follow it. Even so he was

  ( l 4)

  How a Man Is Made

  blinded by the light; none of his senses was of any use to him

  there, and that clearness confused him more than the darkness

  had at night. Every direction held the same empty and illuminated course, and he could not tell which path might mean advance or retreat. Actually, any spot where the man might

  stand would make him the center of the great circle and only the

  arbitrary beginning of a path.

  But ever since two weeks before, when that man had felt the

  power of an act, he also seemed to have come to recognize the

  stupid liberty in which he found himself. Without any thought

  of response, without moving, he accepted the fact that he was the

  only real point of departure.

  Then, as if contemplating for the last time before departure

  the spot where his house had been burned down, Martim looked

  over the great sun-filled emptiness. He could see very well. And

  seeing was something he could do, something he did with a

  certain pride, with his head erect. In two weeks he had recovered

  a natural pride and, like a person who did not think, he had

  become self-sufficient.

  Soon his measured and repeated steps had formed a monotonous march. Thousands of rhythmical steps which bewildered him and carried him along forward all by themselves. Stupefied,

  gigantified by fatigue, he advanced now with the air of a contented idiot-to the point that if he were to stop, he would fall down. But he was going forward stronger and stronger. Meanwhile time passed, and the sun was getting rounder.

  The man had wanted to head toward the sea even before

  happy chance had brought him to the hotel. But without map,

  knowledge, or compass he had been plunging inland. If only by

  fate some path had ended on the open coast, one which was true

  but difficult to reach on foot; if only he had not really had the

  slightest idea of going to some determined place. With the

  leveling continuation of days and nights-uniting himself with

  the continuation and clinging to it with his whole body, it had

  become his secret objective ever since he had fled-with the

  continuation of days and nights, the man had ended up forget-

  ( l 5 )

  T H E

  A P P L E

  I N TH E

  D A R K

  ting the reason for wanting to reach the sea. Who knows, maybe

  there was no practical reason. Maybe it was only to arrive finally

  at the sea, in a moment of dark beauty, that would have brought

  him there.

  Whatever his reason had been, however, he had forgotten it.

  And walking on without stopping he scratched his head violently with a set of stiff fingers; he got a devilish pleasure out of having forgotten. Which did not stop him even now-if in his

  semi-watchfulness he closed his eyes, whose moistness had already been dried up by the light-even now, while making his old desire something real. When he closed his eyes he suddenly

  could see green water breaking over rocks and salting his hot

  face. Then he passed his hand over his face and smiled mysteriously at the feeling of his hard prominent chin, which was something promising and satisfying; he smiled his mask of false

  modesty, and stepped up his pace a little more. He was guided

  by the softness animals have, that makes them walk gracefully.

  But at times a deserted sea no longer spoke to that body

  which his steps had made mechanical and light. And finding in

  himself, only God knows where, a contact with a more intense

  desire he was able to see the high tide by the top of the masts

  and by the croaking of the seagulls!-seagulls croaking their

  salty breath from within his guts, the stormy sea of those who

  leave, the sea that carries them on. I love you, his glance said to a

  stone, because that sudden sea of shouts had disturbed his own

  insides down deep, and that was how he happened to look at the

  stone.

  A mile farther on, the man had forgotten all about the shape

  of the sea, and the effort of its invention had really left him

  quite exhausted. And stumbling hurriedly on across the pebbles

  he thrust out his arms in a great appeal for the desire of a

  nocturnal sea, the sound of which would unroll at last the

  thickness which existed in the silence. His hollow ears were

  thirsty, and the primal sound of the sea would be just the

  thing to least compromise the cautious way in which he had

  become a walking man and nothing else. Because he had thrust

  out his arms abruptly, he lost his balance and almost fell-his

  ( l 6 )

  How a Man Is Made

  heart jumped in fright several times. All during his life that man

  had been afraid of taking a fall on some important occasion.

  Well, it was going to be that moment when, as he lost the

  security that keeps a man on his own two feet, he risked the

  difficult gymnastics of flying without direction. Open-mouthed,

  he looked around himself, because certain gestures had become

  terrifying in the solitude, having a final value in themselves.

  When a man falls down all by himself in a field, he does not

  know to whom to credit his fall.

  For the first time since he had started walking, he stopped.

&
nbsp; He did not even know now to whom to hold out his arms. In his

  heart he could feel the misery there is in taking a fall.

  Then he started walking again. Limping gave dignity to his

  suffering.

  But with the interruption he had lost an essential speed, and

  then he tried to compensate for it by replacing it with a kind of

  intimate violence. And since he had to have before him something that was waiting for him-the sea again broke furiously upon the rocks.

  To reach the sea someday was, however, something he was

  only using now as a part of a dream. He was not even for a

  moment thinking of acting in any way that might turn that

  happy vision into a reality. Not even if he knew what path would

  take him to the sea would he be taking it now-it was so much

  that in a little while he began discarding it with the instinctive

  wisdom that anything in the future would keep him hobbled

  since the future is a two-edged knife, and the future fashions the

  present. With the passage of days other ideas had gradually been

  forming up behind too, as if as undefined time or danger became

  greater, the man would go on divesting himself of what was

  weighing on him. And especially what still might have kept him

  captive in his previous world.

  Up until now-without any desire, lighter and lighter, as if

  hunger and thirst too were a voluntary disengagement of which

  he was slowly beginning to be proud-up until now he was

  advancing like a giant across the countryside, looking about

  himself with an independence that rose to his head with vulgar

  ( 1 7)

  TH E

  A P P L E

  IN

  TH E

  D A R K

  delight, and he began to fool around with it happily. "Today

  must be Sunday" -he even began to think with a certain glory,

  and Sunday would be the coronation of his freedom. "Today

  must be Sunday!" he thought with sudden haughtiness, as if his

  honor had been offended.

  It was a matter of his first clear thought since leaving the

  hotel. Really, since he had fled, it was the first thought that had

  not been just a mere defensive measure. Furthermore, Martim

  did not even know what to do with it at first. It was only the

  novelty of it that bothered him, and he scratched himself

  voraciously without ceasing to walk. Then, applauding himself

  fiercely and joining a hoarse encouragement to the thought, he