inside of me. To be truthful, I'm not the least bit ashamed that,
being nothing, I am so powerful. The fact is that we are modestly
our own process. I belonged to my steps, one by one, in the same
proportion as these people advanced and made a road and built
the world. It was a long road. And it's true that I lied a lot; I lied
as much as I needed to. But perhaps lying is our most acute way
of thinking; perhaps lying is our way of grasping; and I did a lot
of grasping. My hands have a past. It was a long road, and I had
to invent my steps; but this innocence I feel inside of me is the
purpose, because I can also feel, inside of me, the innocence and
silence of other people. Oh, maybe just for an instant! And
then?-then I tum over to all of us the job of living. We are our
own witnesses, it does no good to turn our faces aside. The
consolation is that not everybody has to testify and stammer,
and only some feel the damnation of trying to understand
understanding." By the grace of God, the world that he had
been ready to construct would never have the force of gravity,
and the man that he had invented had fallen short . . . indeed,
he had fallen short of what he himself was !
Could he be discovering gunpowder, perhaps? But maybe
that's the way it is : every man has to discover gunpowder
someday. Or else there would be no experience. And his failure?
( 3 3 7 )
T H E A P P L E I N T H E D A R K
How could he become reconciled to his own failure? Well, every
personal history is the story of a failure. By means of which
. . . Besides, he had not failed completely. "Because I did
create the others," he said to himself looking at the four men.
And love rose up from out of the depths of the inferno. We who
are sick from love. But would anyone ever accept the way in
which he had come to love? Oh, people are so demanding! They
eat bread and they are repelled by those who pound raw dough;
they devour meat but do not invite the butcher to sit down at
the table; people ask for the process to be hidden from them.
Only God would not be disgusted by his twisted love.
Emotional and generous as he felt, Martim would have
become overbearing in his luxury of kindness-the way his own
mother, kind and annoying, would insist with great feeling that
visitors eat and drink. So, just like his mother, he looked at the
four representatives. And without knowing what to give them,
he considered patting the detective with the tobacco on his lapel
on the back. He opened his mouth to say with malicious
complicity, "There, eh, you old devil ! "-but he became embarrassed in the middle, because his mother had also been a moderate woman.
Then, without knowing that he had been thinking about his
mama, what happened to him, in a perfect circle, was the fact
that our parents are not dead. At least not completely dead.
"What was it? What was I thinking just now?" Martim
became surprised and startled. Again that man had thought too
quickly in relation to his own slowness. Every time he hit upon
something, he did not understand himself. "We're too intelligent for our slowness." So, without understanding why on earth he had thought about his mother, he only could realize at that
moment that he had been thinking; and he grunted approval of
his filial sentiments, with that tendency he had to pay homage.
He was a little intrigued at having thought about his mother.
Even though he agreed; in a general way he agreed. He did not
know with what, but he agreed. What would become of us, in
the end, if we did not, like God, use obscurity? Then, without
( 3 3 8 )
The Apple in the Dark
really following the thread of his thoughts, he discovered-all
alone and without the help of anyone-that God and people
write along crooked lines ! I have no way to judge "if they write
honestly. Who am I to judge?" he conceded with magnaminity,
"but along crooked lines." And that-that he had discovered all
by himself.
Another symbol had been touched, then.
Excited by his success, Martim immediately got to work and
thought, "Shoemakers' children go barefoot!" and he stopped to
see if he had hit upon it again. But he could not make any sense
and tired man. Ever since childhood, whenever he had been
successful, he had ended up by coming off badly. When he used
to play soccer and made a happy goal, his next kick always ended
up by sending the ball out of bounds : he was a man of good will.
No, the shoemaker's children hadn't got him anywhere-and
the man felt in time that he was abusing his own state of grace
and forcing his own hand a little. Oh, everything's so dull, he
thought, exhausted, disillusioned.
How many minutes had gone by? What had passed by was
the kind of minutes in which thought is time.
"We've already wasted ten minutes over that map," said the
detective whom Martim had created and who was functioning
for the first time since Martim had thought him up-and functioning perfectly too. "We're going to end up driving at night,"
the detective said annoyed.
"Brave and good," Martim said to himself, recuperated,
ancient, recuperated a little too much even, and almost back in
the Middle Ages : his armor was shining.
He was anxious to please them. And for some time now he
had been dying to ask them if his wife really had had a lover.
Then, for the first time, that was of the greatest importance.
And they had to know; those who were strong and good. He
wanted to be judged by them, who, secure and armed, must also
be charitable-because in Martim's new system of life a person
was fated to be perfect as soon as he had arrived at the point
( 3 3 9 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
of living where a thing came to be born because it was already
complete. With moist eyes, he would ask them humbly, as a
child would-he wanted to be the man's child and to learn
everything all over again. He wanted to obey and to be severely
punished if he did not obey. And he wanted to enter that world
which had the eminently practical advantage of existing. What
am I saying-an advantage that was irreplaceable besides? And
he wanted to ask them, "Did my wife really have a lover?" And
if they said "no," he would believe them. He would believe
whatever they said.
He remembered in despair the contempt that people, especially those who are armed, had for a deceived husband. He was a deceived husband! Feeling that he had been classified filled
him with emotion and thanks.
"Did my wife really have a lover?" he asked them, his eyes
blinking greedily, because now Martim wanted everything that
had happened to be very much his.
The two detectives saw his tears and exchanged ironical
looks.
"He's crying," the one with tobacco on his lapel said, nodding at him. "Besides being a
" he was going to say the
.
.
.
word, but he remembered the presence of a lady in time-"besides that, he cries like a coward."
And that was how, with a new term of classification, Martim
re-entered the world of other people, the world he had left in
order to rebuild. And he recognized with a sniveling humility,
like a dog who has a master but no teeth, the old world where he
was once something, the old world where we who need to be
something other people can see-otherwise, other people will
run the risk of not being themselves any more; and what a
complication that would be! He was the word that the detective
had not dared pronounce in front of Vit6ria, a coward. "They
must be right," Martim thought avidly, generously skipping over
his own disbelief. "They must be right, they know what they're
doing," he thought, contented as a woman. He was very impressed by everybody's kindness. They were so kind that they ( 3 4 ° )
The Apple in the Dark
accepted him back. They even had a designated spot where there
were two names waiting for him. Were they accepting his
return? Oh, but much more than that : they actually demanded
his return. They even came looking for him ! No man could be
lost; the advance of millions needed every man ! And they were
even ready to erase-not the crime itself, never that, fortunately!-but what he had done that was worse : his attempt to break the silence that man needed in order to advance while
they slept."
"What's that music?" he suddenly asked, for he had never
heard a phonograph in that house.
"Ermelinda didn't want to hear what was going on in here
and she put a record on. But she told me to tell you that she'll
wave good-bye from the window," Vit6ria said.
The unexpected interruption confused them all a little. For
an instant they stood there looking at one another, each trying
to discover the other's particular importance in the fact of the
phonograph. Until that moment, one or another of those present had been in charge of the situation. But now it seemed to be happening all by itself; the meeting had no chairman, events
were going on by themselves.
"That's it," the mayor said insecurely, but with severity,
because he was there within his own circumscription and it was
up to him to make everything clear.
And all of them, without realizing it, seemed to have forgotten some objective, or for a moment they had lost the thing that they stood for. Things become disarrayed so easily with a
certain lazy kindness and with a certain empty meditation, that
often everybody goes back home and, having awakened from a
mirage finally, begins again to do what really matters. And what
does really matter? I don't know. Maybe it is to feel with ironic
kindness the way that things that are most real and that what we
want most suddenly seems to be a dream-that we simply know
quite well that . . . that what?
"Will he go to jail?" Vit6ria asked foolishly, passing her
hand across her dry mouth.
THE APPLE
I N THE
D A R K
"But of course! " Martim said quickly, looking at her resentfully, as if she had clumsily offended the men. "Of course!" he said, flattering them; his voice was soft and not very virile.
Vit6ria looked at him perplexed.
"Is he all right, Mayor?" she whispered as if she were in a
sickroom.
Like a bashful hermaphrodite, Martim lowered his eyes,
hiding the fact that he was so complete and perfect. Oh, he was
becoming aware of so many things : that he must have seemed so
stupid in the eyes of other people; that he himself was making
himself stupid; that so many times the feelings he had were not
real; that he was pretending truth as a way to reach it. And that
he was on the brink of a disaster, and that he might suddenly
start trembling with fever or suddenly feel in his own flesh the
reality that was happening to him. "Please don't notice," he
thought, "that I'm exhausted."
The mayor nodded his head, looking at him and speaking
about him as if he were not present.
"That's the way it is, ma'am. When the time comes they
break down like that. Before that they think they're something,"
the mayor said, examining Martim with a curiosity that was
already tired from so much practice. "But when the time to _be
arrested comes, they turn into women; they're afraid."
"Afraid? Oh no," Martin:i thought, really frightened and
upset. "They don't understand me! They have the advantage of
arresting me, and they don't even know why! " He lowered his
head, annihilated, solitary. Would he be arrested for no special
reason?
But as that man was damnably difficult to knock down, he
thought, "It's all right. Who can tell whether jail might not be
just the place where I'll find what I want?" Because, like a
person who has already eaten the cake and still keeps on looking
for the cake, he was still enthralled by the idea of "reform." It's
all right. For example, in the peace and quiet of jail he could
write his confused message. "My own story," he thought, made
over again with the fatuousness that he needed to keep a
( 3 4 2 )
The Apple in the Dark
minimum of personal dignity, the dignity which the mayor had
snatched away from him. Because there's a lot left for me to dol
Because after all, what the hell ! He suddenly remembered "I
used everything I could, except, except imagination! I just forgot!" And imagining was a legitimate means of arriving. Because there was no way of escaping the truth, one could use a lie
without any scruples. Martim remembered when he had tried to
write in the woodshed; and how, out of baseness, he had not
used any lies; and how he had been dully honest with something
that was too big for us to be honest with, we who have the idea
that dishonest people have of honesty.
But in jail, with imagination, he could write that very
twisted story of a man who had . . . Had what? Let's say-a
regret and a fright?
"Above all," he thought, "I swear that in my book I will
have the courage to leave unexplained what cannot be explained."
"Besides," he then thought-"the difficulty of it doesn't
have any importance at all." Because it's difficult to tell things
again, he would use lots of words-so many that it would end up
being a book of words. And that pleased him, right from the
start. Because he liked quantity too, not just quality, the way
they talk about guava jelly. And if he were only tired, he was also
greedy, because, after all, what is bigger is always better than
what is smaller, even if not always. A fat book, then. He would
write the following dedication : "To our crimes." Or, who
knows, maybe : "To our inexplicable crimes."
Martim was contented, attentive, thinking up the story he
would write. "In some way each of us offers up his life to an
impossibility. But it is also true that the impossibility ends up by
being closer to our fingers than we are ourselves, because reality
belongs to God." Martim then thought that we have a
body and
a soul and a wishing and our children-and that, nevertheless,
what we really are is what the impossible creates in us. And, who
knows, his might be the story of an impossibility that had been
touched, of the way in which it could be touched, when fingers
( 3 4 3 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
feel the vein in our pulse in the silence. So, that man who once
had not even known how to write down a list of "things to
know" wanted to write-with his eyes closed in a daydream like
the one an old woman has when she remembers the past and
seems to transpose it into a hope for the future. Again his armor
was shining. He knew only superficially what that book dedicated to our crimes would be. Of one thing, however, he was serenely almost certain, even though cautiously vague : he would
end the book with an apotheosis. Ever since he had been a child
he had always had a certain tendency toward celebration, which
was the most generous part of his nature, that tendency toward
the grand. But in the end everything that people strive for is
nothing but a preparation for a perfect finale. In which, it is
true, one runs the risk of starting to talk out loud, and, finally,
only softness is powerful, Martim was beginning to be aware of
that. But the temptation of an apotheosis was too strong : he had
always been a man who had wanted to buy everybody a drink; he
had always become upset when he had been the patsy, and he
had never had a chance because of his skill and stinginess; he
had always yearned for a generous apotheosis, without any
economy, the way musicals end, with the whole cast coming on
stage.
"Oh God, God." He was exhausted. He didn't want any
apotheosis at all.
Serious now, exhausted, he was looking with drooping hands.
Up till then he had been playing out of pure excitement. But
now what he wanted was poverty and sweetness. He was soft,
tired, he wanted . . . what did he want? "What do I want?"
Oh God, help him, he does not know what he wants.
He did not know. And with a superhuman effort to give it to
himself, he made an expression on his face which if they had
been able to read they would have known what he wanted, even
if they could not have said what it was. What did he really
want? He did not know. A person substitutes so much that he