Gringo

XV

LITTLE-QUEEN

THIS time, his feet had decided on the mangrove.

Rani hopped behind him like an agouti after wild nuts, stopped, raised her nose in the air, sniffed at an herb and plunged into the undergrowth with a delighted laugh.

— Boo!...

— What is it, little queen?

— Look at this one...

She was crouching before a large dark-green basilisk, crest arched, one paw raised and a furious eye spinning like a top:

— And I tell you, for tribe after tribe, that is no way for a basilisk to behave and you will be struck down by the big blue chameleon... which does not exist.

And she burst into a cascade of laughter.

— Yes, he's yellow now.

Gringo shrugged and continued on his way with dignity. Not for long.

— Gringo, hey! Gringo... does the spirit of the tribes float in the trees? Or in what? What is a "spirit"?

Gringo scratched his head.

— It's... Curupira, they say.

— Ah! Curupira, then¹...

She put her finger on her nose, nodded.

— And what's that?

She picked up a nut from the ground.

— It's a chawari nut.

— And Chawari, what is that?

— It's a nut.

— So it's a nut, and chawari is the spirit of the nut — what's the point of all that chawari?

— Listen, little queen...

— No! I tell you, a nut is a nut — why do you want to add a tail to it? Has anyone ever seen a nut with a tail? Do you see Vrittru... with an iguana's tail?

She laughed and laughed.

Gringo was perplexed.

— All right, don't get cross — what I mean is, it saves complications. Now I know: every time I don't know, it's Curupira. There.

She stopped a moment, pulled at her lock of hair.

¹ Curupira: another name for the collective Unconscious...

— And if I eat too many nuts, it's Curupira that gives me a stomach-ache.

She said this and went back to hopping along, adding under her breath: "Does one really need to add Curupiras to everything."

For she was very stubborn.

They arrived at the waterfall instead of the mangrove. How? Gringo never knew — unless his feet had changed their mind along the way.

— How love-ly! exclaimed Rani. And she clasped her breasts between her hands.

A tumble of black diorite opened on the flanks of the serra, washed by foam, bubbling with light, in a cascading uproar pierced by birdsong — then plunging suddenly like a long smooth sheet into the immense crackling swell of greens, all the way to the savanna out there, fringed with silver, and the sea.

Gringo sat down, breathless; it seemed to him he was plunging at last into his country, without bounds.

Rani shook her head, put her finger on the tip of her nose, as if it were all too — too... troubling, perhaps. She looked at Gringo, then at the savanna again, then at Gringo again; one might have thought she was following an invisible trail between that heart and that flight of light. And for the first time her heart clenched as if before a danger greater than Vrittru.

— Wait, she said, put your feet in the torrent. It was freezing, burning.

And she began to wash his wounds.

— Are you hungry? Do you want a nut... of chawari? Gringo shook his head. He listened to the endless rolling, pierced by a humming-bird's cry like a long tender whistle for no ear — or for the infinite, perhaps, blazing with light, at the end of all paths.

— Little queen, he said at last, what comes after man?

— After man? She was dumbfounded. Gringo continued gently:

— After the forest, there is the sea; after the sea, there are the clouds — after man, what is there?

She stayed for a long time contemplating, one hand on her cheek, and it made a burning in her heart.

— After Gringo, I want Gringo still.

— Always with two legs, always with hunger? And then baby Gringos, and then Gringos of Gringos in the forest of forests... forever?

She looked at him for a long time, and her eyes lost themselves at the end of all those little Gringos.

— With two legs, with three legs, I go with Gringo. After the clouds, the rain still loves the forest.

He stroked her tousled hair.

— ...Where you go, I go — you are my great forest.

— Listen, little queen... I don't know. I'm fifteen and I have many uncounted years — before Gringo or always Gringo — and it's...

He remained suspended, as if over an incomprehensible chasm opening in the middle of that tangle of green.

— There is after the forest, there is after Gringo — I don't know. After, do you understand? She nodded, shook herself:

— After, there is my heart still beating.

And Gringo remained with this kind of chasm inside him, making a white flame — a hole of fire never filled.

— Do you know the door of fire?... A white fire. She gave a start.

— The door?... That night you ran — I saw a great white fire. I ran with you and we entered the white fire. I forgot everything.

She stayed there, nose in the air, musing, as if looking at... what?

— Perhaps that's the door of after? she murmured.

Then she gave a sudden cry, like a wounded bird:

— With you, always-always! Through any door!

Then Gringo took her hand. It was small and brown and icy-cold. He held that little hand as one warms a bird. A few large drops of rain fell on their hands.

Then he said slowly, as one sings a melody in the evening to tame the dreams:

— Together we will pass the white door and go to the country of after.

And the rain began to tumble — enormous, warm, consenting — enveloping the waterfall and the forest, and two small forms pressed together like a prayer of the earth in the immense green crackling.