The Apple in the Dark Read online

  with the bird in his hand, he felt pleasure in treating her

  carelessly. And if he were careless for one minute more, he

  would bring back in one gush his whole previous existencewhen thought had been a useless act and pleasure only shameful. Unprotected, he shifted about on the hot stone; he seemed to be searching for an argument that might protect him. He

  needed to defend the thing that with such enormous courage he

  had conquered two weeks before. With this enormous courage

  the man had finally stopped being intelligent.

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  Or had he ever really been intelligent? That happy suspicion

  made him blink his eyes with great shrewdness, because if he

  could manage to prove that he had never been intelligent, then

  it could also be shown that his own past had been some other,

  and it could be shown that something in his very own depths

  had always been complete and firm.

  "The fact is," he then thought, using great care as he tried

  that defensive trick, "the fact is that I was only imitating intelligence, as if I had been able to swim like a fish without actually being one!" The man moved about contentedly : "I was imitating, of course! " Well, if imitating meant having taken first place in statistics, he had taken first place in statistics! The fact is, he

  concluded with great interest and the essential lack of respect

  which is what makes a person imitate, I have only imitated

  intelligence. And along with him millions of men were copying

  with great effort the idea of what it was to be a man, along with

  him thousands of women were copying with great care the idea

  of what it was to be a woman, and along with him hundreds of

  people of good will were copying with superhuman effort the

  very face and idea of existence with the anguished concentration

  with which acts of good or evil are imitated, the daily fear of

  committing an act that is true, and therefore incomparable, and

  therefore inimitable, and therefore disconcerting. And all the

  while there was something old and rotten in some unidentifiable

  place in the house, and people slept restlessly-discomfort is the

  only warning that we copy, and we listen to ourselves attentively

  between the sheets. But we have been carried so far away by

  imitation that the thing we hear comes to us with such slight

  sound that it could be a vision, just as invisible as if it were in

  the darkness that is so deep that hands are useless. Because a

  person will even imitate comprehension-comprehension which

  never would have been invented except for the speech of others

  and words.

  But there was still disobedience.

  Then-by means of the great leap of a crime-two weeks

  before he had taken the risk of having no security, and he had

  reached a point of not understanding.

  ( 2 6 )

  How a Man Is Made

  And under the yellow sun, sitting on a stone, without the

  least bit of security, the man was now rejoicing, as if not understanding were a kind of creation. The caution that a person uses to transform one thing into another thing comparable and

  subsequently approachable; and only after that moment of security, will he look about and let himself be seen, because fortunately it is already too late not to understand-Martim had

  lost that precaution. And not understanding had suddenly given

  him the whole world.

  The whole world, which to tell the truth, was completely

  empty. The man had rejected the speech of others and did not

  even have a speech of his own. And in the meantime, hollow,

  mute, he was rejoicing. Things were fine.

  Then, just as at the beginning of the conversation, that

  person was sitting on a stone on Sunday.

  And so the man now felt himself so far removed from the

  speech of others, that with a perverse pleasure and a daring that

  had come to him out of the same security, he attempted speech

  again. It puzzled him, as it puzzles a man who brushes his teeth

  in the morning and does not recognize the drunk of the night

  before. And as he fooled around now, still cautious, albeit

  fascinated with that dead language, as an experiment he tried to

  give the ancient and so familiar name of "crime" to that so very

  nameless thing that had happened to him.

  But "Crime"? The word resounded emptily in the wasteland, nor did the voice that spoke the word belong to him.

  Then, finally convinced that he would not fall captive to the

  ancient speech, he tried to go a little further; had he perhaps felt

  horror after his crime? Horror? Nevertheless, that was what the

  language expected of him.

  But horror too had come to be a word from that time before

  the great blind leap he had taken along with his crime. The leap

  had been taken. And he had jumped so far that it had ended up

  becoming the only event he was able to or cared to cope with.

  And even the motives of the crime had lost their importance.

  The truth is that the man had wisely abolished the motives.

  And he had abolished the crime itself. Having had certain

  ( 2 7 )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  practice with guilt he knew how to live with it without discom·

  fort. He had committed crimes before that had not been recog·

  nized by law, so that he most likely considered it just a piece of

  bad luck that two weeks before he had committed one that had

  recognition. A good upbringing and long experience in life had

  made him expert at being guilty without betraying himself; no

  ordinary torture would make his soul confess its guilt, and a

  great deal would be necessary to make a hero cry in the end. And

  when this does happen it is such a depressing and repugnant

  spectacle that we cannot bear it unless we feel ourselves be·

  trayed and offended; our surrogate must be unpardonable. It so

  happens that by special circumstances, that the man had be·

  come a hardened hero in two weeks : he represented himself.

  Guilt no longer touched him.

  "Crime?" No. "The great leap?" These did not sound like

  his words, obscure, like the entanglement of a dream. His crime

  had been an involuntary, vital motion, like the reflex of a knee

  when it is tapped : the whole organism had joined together so

  that the leg suddenly gave the irrepressible kick. And he had not

  felt any horror after the crime. What had he felt, then? Stun·

  ning victory!

  That was it-he had felt victory. Astonished, he saw that the

  thing was working unexpectedly : that an act still had the value

  of an act. And furthermore with a single act he had made the

  enemies he had always wanted to have-other people, the

  others. But even further he himself had finally become incapable

  of being that former man, for if he returned to that self, he

  would be obliged to become his own enemy-and, to use the

  speech by which he had lived, he simply could not be friendly to

  a criminal. Therefore, in one fell swoop he was no longer a

  collaborator with other people, and in one fell swoop he had

  ceased to collaborate with himself. For the first time, Martim

  had found himself incapable
of imitating.

  Yes ! In that moment of stunning victory the man had

  suddenly discovered the power of a gesture. The good thing

  about an act is that it reaches beyond us. In just one minute

  Martim had been transfigured by his own act. Because after two

  ( 2 8)

  How a Man Is Made

  weeks of silence it had become quite natural for him to call his

  crime an "act."

  It is true that the feeling of victory had lasted only a fraction

  of a second. There was no time after that; in an extraordinarily

  perfect and well-oiled rhythm there followed that deep stupefaction in which there had been such need for this, his present intelligence, to be born. And it was as crude and wily as that of a

  rat. Simply that, and nothing more. But for the first time it had

  been a tool. For the first time his intelligence had had immediate consequences. And he had come into such total possession of it that he had been able to guide it with great skill so that it

  would make him secure, make his life secure. So much so that he

  immediately knew how to flee, as if, up until then, everything he

  had done in his daily life had been just an indistinct attempt at

  action. And then that man had finally become real, a real rat,

  and any thought from within that new intelligence was just an

  act, even if it was rough like a voice that never had been used.

  Right now he was not very much of a rat. But even if a rat there

  was nothing in him that could not be utilized. The thing was

  fine and deep. That man had fit himself entirely within the

  dimensions of a rat.

  Yes. All this had followed upon the crime to such a point of

  perfection that Martim had not even had time to think about

  what he was doing. But before-for a fraction of a second before

  the conquest. Because one day a man had had that one great

  rage.

  He had had that rage. And for the first time, with candor, he

  had admired himself, like a child who discovers himself in the

  mirror. Apparently, with the accumulation of kindness without

  the act of kindness, with the thought of love without the act of

  love, with heroism without heroism, not to mention a certain

  growing imprecision about existence which had ended up as the

  impossible dream of existence-apparently that man had come

  to forget that a person is able to act. �nd to have discov�red t�at

  he really had already acted involuntarily had suddenly given him

  a world so free that he was stunned at his victory.

  That man had not even asked himself if there was someone

  ( 2 9 )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  who could act by means other than a crime. What he knew in

  fear was only that a man had to have a great rage one day.

  "I was like any one of you," he said very suddenly to the

  stones at that point because they looked like sitting men.

  Having said that Martim sank back into complete silence,

  something like a meditation. He was surrounded by stones. The

  strong wind that blew passed over him the same way it was

  passing over the wasteland. Empty and peaceful he looked at the

  empty and peaceful light. The world was large enough for him

  to sit down. Inside he felt the resonant emptiness of a cathedral.

  "Try to imagine," he began again suddenly, when he was

  sure that he had nothing more to say to them. "Try to imagine a

  person who has had to have an act of rage," he said to a small

  stone that was looking at him with the calm face of a child.

  "That person went on living, living, and other people too took

  pains to imitate him. Until it all began to get very confused with

  the independence of every stone in its place. And there wasn't

  even any way for him to flee from himself because the others

  had become a concrete image and gave off an impassive insistence of just what that person was; every face that person saw would bring back the peaceful nightmare of his deviation. How

  can I explain it to you-you who have the peace that comes with

  not having any future-that every face had failed, and that the

  failure had in itself a perversion, as if a man had gone to bed

  with another man, and of course there was no issue. 'The

  company was so boring,' as my wife used to say," the man

  remembered, smiling and extremely curious. There was some

  mistake, and it was hard to tell just where it lay. "Once I was

  eating in a restaurant," the man said, getting lively suddenly.

  "No, no, I'm changing the subject! " he discovered to his surprise-his father was the one who always had a certain tendency to change the subject; and even when he was dying he had

  shifted his face over to one side.

  "Try to imagine a person," he continued then, "who did not

  have the courage to reject himself. Therefore he needed an act

  which would make other people reject him, and he himself

  would not be able to live with himself after that."

  How a Man Is Made

  The man laughed with parched lips at the way he had used

  the trick of hiding himself behind the name of some other

  person, which had seemed very good to him at the moment, a

  stroke of genius. Then he had that satisfaction that he always

  had when he had managed to trick somebody. He might have

  had the feeling that he was play-acting and strutting, but pretending was a new door which, as he squandered himself for the first time, he could afford the luxury of opening or closing.

  "Try to imagine a person who was small and had no

  strength. Of course he knew very well that all of his strength,

  piece by piece, would only be enough to buy a single act of rage.

  And of course he also knew that such an act would have to be

  quite quick before his courage petered out, and it would even

  have to be hysterical. That person, then, when least expected,

  executed that act, and in it he invested his whole small fortune."

  Quite startled at what he had just thought, the man interrupted himself with curiosity. "Is that what happened to me after all?" It was the first time it had occurred to him.

  The truth is that up until then he had not even taken time

  to think about his crime. But coming to grips with it finally at

  this moment he faced it in a way that no court of law would ever

  recognize. Could he be describing his crime the way a man

  might paint a table in a picture, and no one would recognize it

  because he was painting it from the point of view of someone

  underneath the table?

  What had that man done to his crime in barely two weeks

  time?

  He still asked himself with an aftertaste of scruples, "Was

  that what happened to me?" But a second later it was too late; if

  this were not the truth, it was going to be the truth. With a

  certain graveness the man felt that this moment was very serious : from now on this was going to be the only truth that he would have to fight with.

  What escaped him was whether he had explained his crime

  that way because it had really happened like that, or .whether his

  whole being had been prepared for that type of reality. Or even

  whether he had been giving false reasons because he possessed

  ( 3 l )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E
D A R K

  the simple skill of a fugitive defending himself. But even a long

  period of tendentious dullness would not let him know where

  it was in him that his fingers could feel a sail respond as it

  responds when touched in the reality of a dream. And for the

  time being he was somebody still quite recent, so that everything

  he said not only sounded fine to him, but also amazed him by

  the very fact that he had been able to walk alone.

  Actually at that moment his only direct connection with the

  concrete crime was a thought of extreme curiosity, "Why did it

  have to happen to me?" He felt himself beneath the happenings

  he had created with the crime. Then and there he had broken

  with his habits of life, with the misfortune that usually only

  happens to other people. And suddenly it was not just words

  that had happened to him. Martim was quite sincerely startled

  by the fact that misfortune had also caught up to him, andmore than that-that he had been, in a manner of speaking, ready for it. He had acquired a certain vanity from the fact that

  in the end the crime had happened to him, that until that point

  it had only been for other people.

  The man continued to look at the table from undemeathand what was important was that he recognized it. It is true that hunger was fixing it so that any effort on his part would be

  difficult; the stones, meanwhile, were waiting unmoved for a

  continuation. Then, so as to give him a little rest, his head was

  wise enough to blur a little.

  After that Martim began again more slowly, and tried to

  think with great care because the truth can be different if it is

  spoken with the wrong words. But if the right words are used,

  anybody will see that this is the table from which we eat. In any

  case now that Martim had lost his speech, just as if he had lost

  his money, he would be forced to invent what he wanted to

  have. He remembered his son's saying to him, "I know why God

  created rhinoceroses. It's because He'd never seen a rhinoceros,

  and He created rhinoceroses so He could see one." Martim was

  creating truth so he could see it.

  Oh, it is quite possible that he had been lying to the stones.

  ( 3 2 )

  How a Man Is Made

  The only innocence he possessed besides his tendentious habit