Gringo

XL

THE COUNTRY OF ALL SIDES

AND whoosh! — they were both off. One day, seated at the edge of so many rivers or clearings, at this window and so many other windows on a corner of sky where a few leaves tremble — of pine, of chestnut — on a valley of snow or red plains, slowly, with a caravan; on boiling seas, on seas as tranquil as moiré silk where a tiny surf murmurs again and again; and so many bird cries, so many gazes at nothing, just like that — gazing, one doesn't know at what, through a window or no window, on a boulevard, a bench, in a condemned man's prison-cell at the end of all gazes, in a light morning of honeysuckle and kelp — what did we dream, what did we hear, what music? What landscape behind the landscape, what cry at the end, behind the seagull and all the seagulls, to infinity — like an echo returned from nameless seas and never-seen countries? Where is the country, where is the journey, where then that cry? That something of all lives and all gazes, of all sorrows and one second like an abyss? What do we want — what is there?

And when one has come out of the prison, when one is free and light — what is there still and always, at the bottom of a courtyard of the dead as at the end of all the stars? What mystery, what murmur still of a small surf not yet extinguished?

They both set off into the earth's new eyes.

Gringo went with the cry of a seagull — he flew and flew, wheeled over violet, smooth waters, plunged into the wave and flew again, cried on cliffs, cried on fjords, glided with the surf and set his white wings on one small motionless feet as if for centuries; he went with the polar bear, sank into the waters, seized the silver fish and sank again, swimming in a delight of small waves quivering on his back — then disappeared into the ice floe, slowly, alone, regal and white for ages of snow or seconds of crystal. He played here and there, ran with Rani, melted into the clouds and reappeared in a small golden droplet at the end of a leaf. They ran headlong across the latitudes and longitudes, across the rosy and blue continents and endless meadows of grass with the small green serpent and the firefly — or they simply inhabited an emerald moss with three grains of sunlight, like a tranquil velvet for unchanging seasons. Or they opened their human eyes to the gaze that watches and listened still at the end of the snows and the seasons to that murmur of another land behind all lands — and that cry from no cliff; that never-run race with no wing, no bear's delight, no golden drop at the end of a blade of grass. That surf again and again.

And one morning, at the end of ages that are timeless or ages that have all the time for joy — at the end of days that have no hour, or only a second of beauty, at the end of innumerable lives and small eyes of all colors and all delights, Gringo looked at Rani, and Rani looked at Gringo:

"But where is — where is the great sun of all the snows, the cry of all cries, the small pearl that pearls with all the surf and the wing-beat at the end of wings?"

They looked at something that was not there.

Then a door opened deep in their hearts — which was the heart of the world and of all the small creatures in the world: a door of snow and silence on a tranquil kingdom, so tranquil it did not move; so motionless it was transparent and one could not see it — like air in the air, or like a smile in the depths of a gaze.

— You called me, said a voice.

And that voice seemed to come from all the cries, all the sounds, all the surf, all the music heard or never heard — like the call at the depth of the call, like the seagull at the heart of the wind and the murmur of all the wild seas.

Gringo looked, Rani looked — and they saw nothing.

— I am here — I am everywhere here. It is I who cry in the depths of your cry; it is I who look out from the depth of your eyes.

— But I can't see you, said Gringo.

— But if you saw me, you would search still elsewhere, beyond what you see. I am the elsewhere of the light wind; I am the elsewhere of everything that is here.

— But then it will never be here, said Gringo.

— It is here, it is here, said the voice. It is the soul of beauty of here; it is the second at the depths of time.

Then Gringo and Rani leaned over that second — as over a clear pool, as over a well of snow. They sank into that second of all times, of all gazes, of all the small surf pearling and that will pearl — of each small minute lost at the end of a blade of grass, at the end of a wing, at the end of a cry echoing and reechoing on the cliff, at the end of a nothing that is there. They sank into that call; they set out into that gaze of the gaze.

And it was like magic, suddenly. A mirror turning inside out.

A smile rising from the tranquil waters and invading the whole clear pool and the whole well of the gaze and every second of time and every tiny pearl of the eternal ebb and flow. It was that which gazed, that which sought, that which called and loved in the depths of every fleeting second as in the depths of golden eternities. It was the elsewhere of here — the time of snow beneath all times of misery or joy; the small window of smile behind all ordeals, all delights; the small nothing filling everything — so light that one cannot see it, so tranquil that it is like the silence of silence and the wingbeat of all that passes.

Gringo and Rani entered that smile — and it was the beginning of the world, its end and its middle; its small rosy drop in the middle of all rainbows; its small pure drop in the middle of every second; its bird cry in the depths of all fjords and all sorrows; its great space in the depths of the surf while the ages pass and the worlds change.

So nothing more needed to change — because they were in the same smile everywhere. Like the small green algae in the waterfall, saying “again-again”...

And always.

Land's End
19 September 1979