Gringo

XXII

THE DOOR OF SNOW

THEY flew and flew through the great white corridor outside time, like two birds toward no port, no place, for the sole joy of beating and beating of wings in that flow of light punctuated by deep,blue lakes like sleep. There was no past, no future: an immense present as soft as a wing over the smooth fields of infinity; there was neither you nor I, neither here nor out-there: a single slow beat and great eyes resting on a beauty that would last forever. And the flight went on and on, like the luminous echo of a joy for its own sake on the white crests of the eternal.

They arrived at the door of snow.

Already time was taking a body and a memory, and white fingers to caress its world.

He pressed the door; it filled with a flame as gentle as the peach blossom's corolla. It opened in a breath.

Gringo was seated at the edge of a frozen lake. He was still and tranquil like the morning mists that faded into the reeds. He had been there perhaps since dawn after dawn: he watched. He watched the dream from the depths of his eyes, or the mother-of-pearl of the morning slipping between the straight reeds as the mists lifted. And the lake, like a great shell of light caught in the mesh of the night. A goose began to cry behind the reeds; its cry faded far, far away into a marsh of shadows pierced by white rays, or perhaps there, in the depths of his heart, like a sharp memory trapped in a silence of ice. Something began to stir within him: he was waking to time and remembrance, like a first wound on closed-over snow, or like a first trembling throb of the joy of living. 

And the dawn exploded in a thousand fires, scattering a powder of gold over the scraps of night and uncovering the green islands of reeds amid the frozen sheets.

Where is she? he thought.

For time was always "something-that-is-not-there."

Instantly, Rani appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the lake. She was bundled up in a thick curly-haired fur coat, with a small ermine cap that revealed just her round cheeks and large, laughing slanted eyes. She held a bundle of birch leaves under her arm.

— I'm going to feed Chacko — are you coming to the forest?

— Little queen, he said, climbing the steps, don't you remember?

— Remember what?

— I don't know. Don't you remember?

— You're strange, Gringo. The sun is beautiful today and the snow is soft as eiderdown. It smells of pine.

— And Ma?

Rani pointed her chin toward the castle, and instantly She appeared in the great snow-covered avenue lined by spruce trees. Gringo ran towards Her; Rani gamboled like a joyous bear cub with her bundle of leaves under her arm.

— How beautiful you are! exclaimed Gringo, taking Ma's hand.

She was the age of the sunlit morning, She was so tall in her white cape.

— You called me, little one?

— Ma, cried Rani, we're going to feed Chacko in the forest — are you coming with us?

And they set off all three, hand in hand — She in the middle and Gringo on her left.

The snow crunched softly beneath their steps; the sun pierced the powdered pine trees, letting columns of gold fall upon the dazzling crystals. They walked in a silence filled with scents, moving through days and days like any other, from one golden flow to another, each suddenly setting them ablaze as if they were caught forever in an enchanted sunbeam. Gringo let his hand wander in the ray — and then they walked on; there was yet another ray, and the strong smell of resin, and the snow sinking into the snow.

— Ma, why...

And he stayed there, lost in his question that had no words — it was simply "why," and nothing was enchanted anymore.

— He wants to remember, said Rani with a shrug — the very idea!

— Ma, I heard the cry of the geese this morning, in the reeds — and it was... I don't know, something from far-far away calling me.

Ma smiled; her eyes were blue as the lake when the ice begins to melt. There was a spark of mockery in those eyes, or amusement: Ma was the one who was always amused. Gringo was the one who was never amused. He wanted the radical definitive — but what was the "definitive"? Perhaps that was precisely his question. To be caught in the golden flow... forever and ever?

— You want to leave already?

His heart clenched suddenly, as before an abyss.

— Leave?

He looked at the pine trees, at Rani hopping about, at the snow so soft and tranquil.

— Ma, what is that cry?

— Wait — I'll show you.

Rani began calling: "Chacko! Chacko!..." Her small clear voice faded into the silence like a crystal. The great pine trees were so immense with their violet trunks. Gringo didn't feel any taller than a sprite. Then a muffled tread was heard, the cracking of dead branches: Chacko the great reindeer was there, nostrils steaming and antlers held high. Rani danced:

— Oh Chacko, great Chacko, beautiful Chacko... 

She lifted one leg, then the other, then turned in a circle. She was perfectly enchanted. Chacko too, though more decorously; he grazed a few tender birch leaves, and they all four set off.

They arrived near a frozen spring among large frost-covered rocks.

— Do you want to know? said Ma.

Gringo was no longer so sure. Rani stroked Chacko's neck; his head bobbed approvingly. She stretched to her full height on the tips of her boots to pull his fur: "Big Chacko, beautiful Chacko, good Chacko..."

— Ma, she called out, if I climbed on his back and we would gallop, eh?

— You see, she too wants to leave!... Well then, look. I'll show you. 

Ma leaned over, picked up a pebble, and broke the mirror of the small spring.

A black hole appeared between the broken crystals.

Gringo wasn't sure anymore — but Gringo would never be sure until the Judgment day, unless he were changed... into what? Perhaps into a gargoyle petrified in a sunbeam. Gringo was the perpetual question.

Ma placed her hand on Gringo's forehead.

— Lean over and look.

It was black. He made out first his white face beneath a fur cap. Rani was still humming: "Great Chacko, beautiful Chacko..." Everything was tranquil as if for eternity. Gringo looked at this face, these eyes that shone like a well of light. He felt a spell was about to be broken; his heart sank, Rani's voice faded away. Everything turned white. He plunged into the white well, like a grebe's cry into a scintillating lake. It was perfectly round. He felt he was about to tumble forward but something still held him — perhaps that small voice coming from far-far away, as if through fields of snow. A round door filled with a green, moving flame. One might have said luminous algae. The curtain of algae parted: Gringo was looking from above, as if leaning over a porthole, at a lake and tall ferns, and a naked form with copper skin that seemed to be sleeping on the rocks; there was a smile on those lips.

— You see: that one is you, said Ma in a clear voice. 

Another form, a little smaller, was looking at me, one hand on its cheek, with an intense gaze: it was Rani. Everything was very still, as if suspended. Gringo watched and watched.

— You see, you're smiling.

He felt a warm, rustling breath rise within him. Ma placed her hand on his shoulder:

— Wait.

The lake blurred gently, like algae undulating and closing again. The flame turned white; he thought he could hear Rani's voice in the distance like a small waterfall. Then the white was tinged with amethyst, like rising wisps of smoke; the wisps parted, revealing a white window. Gringo leaned over: there was a chained man, other men too being led to their execution; a heavy cart with creaking wheel-hubs on a nearly-red sand, and then those peaks stretching to infinity, tinged by the first rays of sunlight. The man was smiling.

— You see: that one is you. You're smiling.

Gringo stared and stared at that bare-chested man; he felt he was about to melt into that gaze and that gaze would melt into the sun on the peaks above — above the red trails of Turkestan, where men dressed in wild skins roared, while banners flapped in a fiery wind.

— Wait.

The peaks blurred, the gaze was lost in a last cascade of sunlight. It was white again, and Rani's small voice still sang behind the snows.

— Do you want to see more?

Gringo didn't know — he stood there, fascinated by this well of snow as if some secret was going to burst forth at any moment. Then the snow curtain filled with a straw-colored, almost yellow flame that slowly parted under the pressure of his gaze. There was a man in a stone cell, seated on a bench, hands clasped between his knees and eyes closed. The cell door opened. There was a smile beneath those closed eyes like a gentle flame melting into an eternal love.

— You see: that one is you.

And Ma's voice resonated beside him as through fields of light — as if they walked together forever in a great, serene country where all sorrows are effaced, do not even exist, vanish like a curtain of shadow over a great immutable snow. And Gringo sank into this gentleness, sinking like the great reindeer out there in the frozen tundra beneath a ray of sunlight.

A priest placed his hand on his shoulder: there was a cross in his belt and a hand gripping a cord-belt. Gringo was slightly shocked — everything went white.

— Do you want more?

Gringo wanted nothing; he was plunged into a kind of cataclysm. He stared and stared at that white question on the curtain, each time it closed. And as long as that question burned, the curtain would have to open again and again.

It opened onto a sunlit avenue: a boulevard teeming with people amid the honking of horns. A tide of men going somewhere unknown — rushed and somber, gaze low and fixed on the cement, or on some haste out there, behind that swell of shadows. And then a student, books under his arm, suddenly stops, places his hand on a chestnut tree at the edge of the pavement, raises his eyes and looks — looks at what? Simply at this passing swell, or perhaps at that reflection of sun on a windowpane — perhaps at nothing, a nothing so intense that his eyes are like empty portholes. He gazes and gazes at the nothingness passing by, the day passing, the pane shining, and it is so NOTHING all at once that his hand falls and his eyes close for a second — a moment where everything is voided... And then that void fills with an inexpressible something, which is like the only thing: a small white flame like a prayer, or like a cry before the shipwreck. Then Gringo saw those eyes open like a sea, and the whole crowd dissolve in a white glittering. He looked and looked at this glittering in his heart, this arrested second — and it was like a smile rising from the bottom of nothing, from the bottom of a white memory. A smile for nothing. And it was the only something.

Gringo recognized himself.

— Ma! more — I want to know!

Then the straw curtain suddenly filled with a black fire. Gringo felt an intense pain. He opened great vacant eyes on a courtyard white with snow. They were in groups of four, dressed in striped smocks. They were like the dead looking at death. There were two men on a small cart, pulled by other men in striped smocks. There were white spotlights on the snow, and shadows. And a teenager who stared and stared at those about to be hanged — stared at that naked self with great vacant eyes, those shadows after shadows like himself, that black-naked-nothing beneath white spotlights — ah! that cry — that CRY inside, as from the depths of lives of death, of night, of nothing, of lives and lives for nothing, of null nothingness like crushed pain, like a thousand cries inside from a thousand men gathered in one single beat, in one atrocious second — like a thousand deaths gathered in one single final breath, in this single standing heart, this single gaze of fire — and everything was about to topple once more beneath white or black spotlights: sorrows and sorrows and cries again — FOR WHAT? And that "for-what" resonated in the snowy night like the clamor of the whole earth.

Then everything changed.

The night filled with a flame as gentle as the peach blossom's corolla, and with music from afar — as if all those dead and dying came to deliver their song and their secret of beauty beneath the horror, their secret of love beneath the sorrow, and the quiet secret behind the cries:

— You will know, she said.

And it was like a promise for the whole earth.

— This time? he asked.

— This time.

Because this time, it was the tale of all the earth's tales.