had nothing more to lose, and he was not selling out to any
compromise. He could go out and face a new order. Then,
startled, he asked himself if ever any man had been as free as he
was now-after which he calmed down. Not that he was really
calm. I n fact, his body was trembling. But from now on, starting
with this very instant, he would have to be calm and unbelievably astute in order to succeed in keeping up with himself and with the rapidity with which he would have to act. He had to be
calm-now that he had found his own greatness up on the
mountain, the greatness with which he was being born.
( 1 4 0 )
The Birth of the Hero
That greatness-oh, just the measure of a man-that had
been buried as a shameful and useless weapon. To be a man was
to be s01nething without trying hard. But he finally needed
greatness as an instrument. Martim needed himself deeply for
the first time. As if finally-finally-he had been summoned
. . . Which left him flustered in the darkness. And since in the
darkness not even the walls could see his face, Martim took
great relief in making a face of pain, and then one of shame for
the joy that he felt, and then one of pain.
Finally he sat down on his bed. And on a cold and calculating level he decided that his first battle would be with himself.
Because if he wanted to rebuild the world, he himself was
not fit for it . . . If as the end result of his work he wanted to
reach other men he would first have to stop the complete
destruction of his former way of being. In order for the beggar at
the door of the movies not to be a perpetual and abstract person
Martim would have to begin from far off and from the very
beginning. It was true that there was little left to be destroyed
for by his crime he had already destroyed a great deal. But not
everything. There was still-there was still himself, which was a
constant temptation. And his thought, as it existed, was only
able to provide a predetermined and inevitable result, just as a
scythe can only cut a predetermined swath. If he had managed
the first and primitive destruction with his act of rage the more
delicate task was still to be accomplished. And the delicate task
was this : being objective.
But how? in what way is one objective? Because if a person
did not want to make a mistake-and Martim never wanted to
make a mistake again-he would end up prudently adopting the
following approach, "There is nothing as white as white," "there
is nothing as full of water as something full of water," "a yellow
thing is yellow in color." Which would not be just prudence, it
would be an exactitude of calculation and a rigorous sobriety of
mind. But where would it lead him? because we are not scientists in the end.
The task was this : being objective. And it could well be the
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T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
strangest experience a man can have. As far as Martim could
remember he had never heard anyone talk about an objective
man. No, no-he was a little tired, and he was becoming
confused-there had been men like that; men already had
existed, yes, whose souls had come to exist through acts and to
whom other men had not been gigantic fingernails; there h1d
been men like that-he no longer could remember who, and he
was a little fatigued, a little lonely. In fact it would have been so
easy for his plan to escape his own perception, which was so frail
in the midst of all his merely brutish strength, that he feared lest
instinct should not come to his aid, and that as a desperate
measure he would become intelligent. And he, in the meantime,
had not got beyond being a vague thing that wanted to question,
question, and question-until little by little the world would
take the shape of an answer.
Martim hesitated, tired; he looked around him; he recovered
a little. He advanced backwards, with apparent freedom. What
sometimes gave him support and an overall desire to continue
was the memory of his successful pleasure with women. But
then immediately the fact that he had never had a bicycle would
a dripping faucet, he had wanted that bicycle. Again his plan
seemed too fragile to him, and that breathing thing that he was
there in the darkness seemed very small to him, like the start of
a conversation. Martim became all mixed up, as if he had more
fingers than he needed, and as if he himself was getting his own
road confused. Then he got the desire for a child to start crying
so that he could comfort it. The fact was that he was unsheltered and he felt the necessity for giving, which is the form an unskilled person uses to ask for something. His ambition was
great and unprotected, he would have liked to hold the hand of
a child; he was a little tired.
"Why do I want so much?" and it was brought on by that
habit which once more would end up making an abstraction out
of the hunger of others, the same habit which is the fear a man
has. "And what if I were not to take myself seriously?" he
( l 4 2)
The Birth of the Hero
thought astutely, since that had been the age-old solution, and
of many people. "Because if we were suddenly to give importance to what really is important to us-we would have our whole life lost." But it was also said that he who loses his life
shall gain his life.
When the restful discouragement had passed Martim moved
about restlessly; he would have to control himself every time the
habit returned. Because from now on he would no longer even
be permitted to interrupt himself with the question-"what do I
want so much for" -any interruption could be fatal, and he ran
the risk of losing not only his speed, but his balance as well.
Growth is full of tricks and self-derision and fraud; only a few
people have the requisite dishonesty not to become nauseated.
With the fierceness of self-preservation Martim could no longer
permit himself the luxury of decency or interrupt himself with
sincerity.
Chapter 4
DURING THAT INTERVAL DAWN BROKE.
And while he was opening the first trench in the morning
light, at the same time that his thick hands were obeying him,
Martim had already begun to apply himself to a task of infinite
exactitude and vigilance. Was it that of monopolizing himself
and along with himself the world? Was it precisely that he was
doing? But did it really make so much difference to know what
he was doing? He was constructing a dream-which was the
only way in which truth could come to him and he could make it
live. Was it indispensable, then, to understand perfectly what
was happening to him? If we understand it deeply, do we also
have to understand it superficially? If we recognize our own
taking on shape through its slow movement-just as one recognizes a place where he has been only once before-is it necessary to translate it into words that compromise us?
Groping, then, and having only his intention for a
compass,
Martim seemed to be trying to start at the exact beginning. And
rebuild from the very first stone, until he would come to the
moment when the great deviation had taken place-what had
been his impalpable mistake as a man? Until by stirring up the
vast and useless spread of the world he could once more reach
the instant when the great mistake had been made. And when
little by little he had rebuilt the path already followed and he
came to the point where the mistake had taken place he would
go off in a direction opposite to the deviation. In the morning
light it seemed as simple as that; once the world had been
rebuilt within him, then we would know how to act. And his
action would not be the abstract action that comes from
thought, but the real kind.
What kind? "Whatever it turns out to be," he said with
The Birth of the Hero
quiet insolence. And if the time were too short, if Vit6ria turned
him in before he was ready and he did not have any freedom for
the action, he at least would have come to know what the action
of a man is. And that too was a maximum. ( Oh, he knew quite
well that if it was explained, no one would understand, because
explaining how one foot follows the other cannot give anyone an
idea of what walking is like. ) Oh, there was little time, yes, he
knew that. He could almost hear the enormous silence with
which the hands of the clock advanced. But he did not feel
upset at being the guardian of so little time; the time of a whole
lifetime can also be little. That man had already accepted the
great contingency.
On the first day, then, all he asked of himself was objectivity,
which became a source of worries and deceptions. For example,
a bird was singing. But from the moment in which Martim tried
to make it concrete, the bird stopped being a symbol and
suddenly was nothing more than what can be called a bird. In
compensation the chickens, in his tired eyes, had become day
itself; they ran white and hurriedly about through the mist-if
Martim was not quick, he would lose the morning sun-the
roosters ran around, sometimes they would flap their wings; the
hens who were not busy with their eggs were free. All of that was
morning itself, and a person who was not quick would lose itobjectivity was a dizzying glance. Martim then discovered the business of rhythm. When his �yes tried to do more than just
describe things the result of his effort would be the empty shape
of a rooster. Besides, in his task of constructing reality, Martim
had in his disfavor the novelty of things not being obvious
anymore; he was bumping into things at every moment. Against
him too was the feeling of precious time. Although Martim did
have one great advantage : if life was short, the days were long.
Still in his favor was the fact that he knew he should walk in a
straight line because it would not be very practical to lose the
thread of the maze. In his disfavor there was a danger he was on
the lookout for: the fact that there were pleasure and beauty in a
person's losing himself. In his disfavor there was also the fact
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T H E A PP L E
I N T H E D A R K
that he did not understand very much. But especially in his favor
was the fact that not understanding was his clean, new starting
point.
All right. That was a first attempt at reconstruction and with
a fresh starting point.
But-but could he have started too far back at the beginning?
Then he looked about the empty countryside and it seemed
to him that he had gone back to the creation of the world. In his
leap backwards, through an error in calculation, he had gone
back too far-and it seemed to him that through an error in
calculation he had put himself uncomfortably facing a monkey's
first perplexity. As a monkey, at least he would have been
endowed with the wisdom that would make him scratch himself
and by which the countryside would gradually become within
reach of his leaps. But he did not have the resources of a
monkey.
Had he begun too far back at the beginning? And then, in
spite of his heroism, there was a practical question : he did not
have sufficient material time to start so far back. There was
already so little time left for him to cover what had taken him
almost forty years to cover; and not just cover the old road in a
new way, but also to do what he had not been able to do until
that time, reach comprehension and go beyond it by using it.
There was little time for all of that now. Especially because he
was starting, in a manner of speaking, from scratch ! And yet, if
he wanted to be faithful to his own necessity, he could not
deceive it. He had to start at the very beginning.
Which, as he dug away, suddenly seemed easy again. Because
each minute might be the whole time-if a person were free
enough to be aware of that minute. Martim knew all about that
because once, in one minute already lost, he had accepted rage,
and in one minute a path had opened up like a destiny. And
later on, in one minute, he had not been afraid to be great; and
without shame, in one minute, he had accepted the role of a
man as his own.
That was what it was then; having already lost his first
( l 4 6 )
The Birth of the Hero
modesty on the mountain, Martim, without feeling it, was
losing his last bonds, so that now it was no longer monstrous for
a person to take on the function of a person and to "rebuild" -
which seemed most easy to him. Until today everything that he
had seen was so that he would not see, everything that he had
done was so that he would not do, everything he had felt was so
that he would not feel. His eyes would see today even if they
exploded. He who had never faced anything head-on. Few
people had probably ever had the chance to rebuild existence on
their own terms. "A nous deux," he suddenly said, interrupting
his work and looking. Because it was just a question of beginning.
But as if he had had a childish dream, he looked again at the
bird that was singing and said to himself, "What can I make out
of him?"
Because in this first vision there was no longer any room for a
bird. Everything had been given to him, yes. But taken apart and
in pieces. And he, with pieces left over in his hand, did not seem
to know how to put the thing back together again. Everything
belonged to him to do with as he wanted. In the meantime his
very freedom left him helpless, as if God had listened too weII to
his plea and had given him everything. But it was possible that
He had withdrawn at the same time. The whole countryside
belonged to Martim, and also a bird that was singing. And in
that short time it was the whole of life for him too. And no one
or nothing could help him. It had been exactly that which he
had prepared with care, and he had prepared it even with a
crime. But even if he had begun astutely
with the easiest thingwhat is simpler than a bird singing? He asked himself embarrassedly then, "What do I do with a singing bird?"
Then he looked sharply at the bird. But he, he could not
deduce anything. The fact was that by concentrating and brimming with good wiII he managed to attain from the effort of staring at the bird a maximum tension that was like a feeling of
beauty. But only that. Nothing else. Was watching the bird sing
the limit of his intuition? Is "two and two are four" the great
leap that a man can take?
As could be seen, that first day of objectivity was like walking
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T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
in his sleep. If he had tried to go from the spirit of geometry to
that of finesse things obstinately would not have any finesse that
could be reached by his large mouth or his rather unskilled
hands. His was a great spiritual effort, then-and a little dull
and cheap. What helped him was that he had the fearlessness of
those who, since they are not foresighted enough to spot the
difficulty, fail to see any obstacles. What also helped him was
the fact that having become accustomed to the fact that he was
not brilliant, he thought once again that the difficulty was only
his own; so he made an effort. Until he reached a point of
anxious responsibility at which it seemed to him that if he was
not conscious of the fact that flowers were growing, flowers
would not grow.
In the meantime-in the meantime, on that very day there
were moments when the effort of applying himself in an attempt
to understand was like beating with a stick on the dry ground
and feeling that there was water there. It was also true that his
talent did not go beyond that.
It was at night that Martim had a thought more or less like
this : whether the story of a person was not always the story of
his failure. By means of which . . . what? By means of which,
period. Right away, unwilling to use that thought, he took
refuge in thinking about his son. Because his love for his son was
one of the truths he liked best.
Chapter 5
WITH the passage of days the woman became more aware of his
presence and took for stability that sluggish air Martim had
assumed and which had arisen from the fact that moment by