Gringo

XXXIV

QUINO'S FLUTE

RANI walked silently beside him — she was not skipping. The forest closed behind them like a curtain. Gringo did not know where he was going: he just walked - for right or left, north or south were all the same pain. Life was suddenly a walk through nothing. There was no past, there was no future: trees ahead, trees behind, and this single step now — as into millions of trees beyond. The world was this empty minute passing. It was almost crushingly empty. And yet it went on — for what? For a moment he wanted to stop there and open his great eyes of nothingness... but if he stopped, even for a second, he knew he could not set off again — like a lichen stuck to a pebble, forever. This pain had to have a meaning; otherwise it was frightening. Rani took one step, another step — she picked up a nut, another nut for the road. She hid her pain in small gestures, and sometimes a flash would pass through her like an arrow in the heart: "I should have killed him." Then her great black eyes fixed for a moment on the trail, on a small green moss — and it was such pain that one could bear no more. Gringo saw nothing; he gazed at that small white form in its boat of flames, those great eyes from elsewhere staring at... what? He still felt that rising flame, that golden invasion in his body — and then... what? A tree, another tree, still another tree, and forever. They walked through the burning nothing like two small children of man, at the beginning of time or at its end, beneath the same high vault and the grinding of the insects like a drill about to pierce... what? For the only time was now — and forever now. There was nowhere to go: the only place was here, and forever here. They were arriving at null time and crushing space. And what — in tens of millions of years, or thousands of black or blue eyes, beneath other suns or other murmurs and other gestures — what would truly be otherwise?

He took Rani's small hand: it was frozen.

— Wait, she said — there are seeds for the parakeets here; they're good. 

And she plunged into the undergrowth like a wounded bird.

The sound of the waterfall could be heard.

Then they ran — as if that waterfall suddenly had meaning, a friendliness. It was familiar — rustling and cool and warm in the heart. They scaled the black basalt rocks in a flurry of screeching parakeets and lizards. It was there. A dazzlement of sky above the high green tide, rolling and flowing with its shadowy gorges and gentle crests — like an immense bubbling of emerald mingled with gold, all the way to the sea out there, flat and glittering, like a fragment of infinity caught between the earth's rocks.

And the cool, crystalline water for the old wound of being a man in the middle of the world — neither beast nor bird, neither lizard nor small leaf; what then? If he were "that" which he is — perhaps man would be found, for all times, all places, all the small nows coming and going and passing and returning, never stopping at any golden second, like the sun in a small, full drop.

— Little queen... She said: "There is the man after man." If we found that, we might perhaps find the place — you understand, the place...

She let her fingers flow in the cool water. There were tiny algae dancing around.

— The place... she said, nodding. But if She is not there, there is no place.

She raised her nose, looked at the forest — the trees, so many trees like a green deluge with a small Gringo, a small Rani, further, still further, and it was always here.

— Will She walk with us again, do you think?

— But there is a place, little queen — I don't know... a place where it must be full. And if it is full, She is there — inevitably. Is there not a full place, do you think, in all of this?

He gazed and gazed at the great swell. She gazed and gazed. For millions and millions of years they had been gazing perhaps — with thousands and thousands of human eyes that had opened, and closed, opened again and never truly opened on the one thing, the one small tree, the one small shoot, the... something that would make those blue or black eyes change forever — their eternal ravishment, their smile of peace on every small leaf and every drop murmuring in the great torrent. Then it would never close again, for they would hold the world's treasure in their hearts like the baby bird in the hollow of the nest, like the green alga in the trough of the wave, like enchanted minute after enchanted minute in the heart of an invariable gentleness.

And where was it — that minute, that enchanted place? That there-forever.

They heard the sound of a flute.

A tousled head appeared below, beneath the waterfall. A small child of man sat at the edge of the rock. It was Quino.

He was playing for the waterfall, or for nothing — letting his notes drop as beads, to join with the waterfall, with the soft wind, with nothing and everything, with his heart that pearled. He had gone into a small river of song, and out-there was here, now was always; his flute rose and rose with the shrill cry of the hoopoe, plunged and sank into the valley of shadow where the green serpent glides and the solitary cricket murmurs beneath the leaf, then took off again with a wingbeat, leaving a small rain of liquid notes on a field of torn azure.

Then everything fell silent.

There was that minute.

It still vibrated in the distance — behind the swell and the white glimmer — in a depth here that seemed to merge with the depths out there, and trickle through a great sweet memory like an endless arpeggio over arrested snowy times.

And Ma seemed to be smiling there.

But it was a dream. It was a dream!

Gringo picked up a pebble and with a precise shot sent it flying at Quino's head.

— Hey! Quino!

He turned around, stunned. He climbed the rocks in a burst of laughter.

— But what are you doing here?

— And you?

They laughed — and it was good to laugh together.

— Here, said Rani. I have seeds and nuts for everyone. They ate and laughed again.

— Shall we go together? said Gringo.

— Where?

— Ah! well — I don't know!

Quino looked out ahead at the forest there, and everywhere.

— It's big... And what will we eat?

— Well — you have some nuts; we'll eat whatever we find.

— That's not much... And where will you sleep?

— I don't know — in the trees.

— There are animals.

— Are you afraid?

— N... no, said Quino, scratching his head. But we don't know where we're going.

— And here — where are you going?

— Well...

Rani was watching all of this with vague amusement.

— Do you want to stay with Vrittru, with Psilla, with all these people?

— But where do you want to go? There's no one out there. We've never gone out there.

— Then listen, said Gringo, exasperated. You can stay for two thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven years in the tribe that will make small tribes that will make other tribes. And if Ma comes back, they'll kill her again.

— But it's the Law, said Quino, completely dumbfounded.

— I've had enough of the law. Listen, Quino — I don't want to force you to come with us.

Quino suddenly turned pale; he pressed his flute to his heart — he didn't know where to go; he knew only the country of his flute. Rani felt sorry for him.

— Say, Quino — whether you stay or go, it's the same: we love you. You'll come and play from time to time here, under the waterfall, and you'll think of us. Perhaps one day we'll find each other again... out there.

Great tears ran down Quino's cheeks — he was lost.

— You remember, Gringo — you wanted to fly... As for me, I fly with my flute!

— I want to fly with my body, not with dreams.

Silence fell between them.

The waterfall was still cascading, making a small rainbow. Gringo stood up. He looked to the West, the North, the South.

— That way is forest; that way is still forest; that way is the serra... 

Quino watched him in anguish.

— We'll go that way, said Gringo, pointing to the savanna and the sea. Then he gathered a few algae and stones from the torrent. He took Rani's hand.

They set out towards the East.

A small figure gazed at the waterfall  for a long time.