The Apple in the Dark by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: New Directions

9

ONLY WHEN VITÓRIA went back to the cornfield with Francisco did Ermelinda have the chance to turn up with a basket of food:

— For a picnic in the woodshed, she said hoping he’d be overjoyed by the surprise.

But, annoyed, he murmured something about how women were crazy about picnics, and for an instant she wilted in disappointment. Only for an instant did she have to make the vague effort to pretend that “everything was all right.” Because, even though she ate the sandwiches by herself, she pulled herself back together quickly, and now was talking with volubility, inebriated by the joy that, “like it or not,” existed in a picnic. Without blinking, Martim received cynically several drips of saliva in his face. For some reason, he tried to be ironic and rise above the situation.

But the truth is that for him it was relaxing to have that woman who gave herself so easily, as if having her at his disposal were already an achieved goal: to that point he’d already dominated her. The sillier she was, the more she was his: she was making up for the difficulty that Martim was having with himself. And, in a relief that seemed to him must have been that felt by the man when woman had been finally created — taking away at last his freedom and at last making it impossible for him to be formidable — he was already smiling, hardly hearing her. The girl was the type who allows, without getting offended, a man to wander off, which he did naturally as if they were married. And soon, absent, already smiling, he was flattered by the nonsense that flowed out of her with sweetness and that let him drift off to sleep in peace. The girl had a smell of a box of face powder that was making him a bit nauseated.

— Don’t you want to take a bath? he’d said to her one day with great delicacy, because I can’t stand that smell, he said uncomfortable.

— But it’s powder! she said surprised.

— I know, but I can’t stand it.

— Fine, she said thoughtfully. And she never again smelled of powder.

She was now caressing his hair with attention, ingratiating, distracted, small:

— Do you believe in the other life? she then asked him, immediately smoothing his hair with more intensity as if blowing on a sting so that it wouldn’t hurt so much. For an instant he was surprised as if, looking like a little bird who was nibbling lightly with its beak, she might just lunge forward. But it was only an instant of mistrust, his, and he smiled, seizing her, whole and soft as she was, and as curious as a woman is curious, which reminded him of his wife.

— No, I don’t, he said.

— Silly! she said laughing. Since in intimacy people were used to insulting each other, insulting each other would be an intimacy, and that way they felt quite nice together. Too cowardly to be able

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