Gringo

XXXVII

THE NULL MINUTE

THEY entered a light air that seemed to be made of sunshine. To breathe was a kind of joy; to walk was another breath. It was the whole body breathing — not only the lungs, but countless swellings of ease, as if each cell had its particular delight, and all together it was... oh! an exquisite moving, breathing lightness — truly like a myriad of small suns bubbling through the whole body, and what joy! A body of joy. Gringo gave a small leap with closed eyes — perhaps the doe makes such a leap, with that joy; the little scurrying lizard, the eider perched on one leg, the serpent coiled in its tranquil ring — all, all of them!... Gringo had forgotten, and suddenly he was breathing thousands of times in his body for the thousands of walled-up years — leaping with closed eyes in an immense light delight. And then there was no need to see with an oculist's eyes, fixed there in their holes with a small, unchanging color; there was no need to see at all! It was seen-lived through every sunlit pore — touched-sensed by innumerable small vibrating antennae drinking in air and sight like the pistils of a flowering tree. And hop! — Rani had taken his hand and they were both running like children of the new world through the fields of joy.

Ma watched them, smiling.

They played for a long time perhaps — time was just a fleeting moment of joy. It measured joy; and when one had played well, it closed like a tight bud, there, enveloped in its own fragrance. One was no longer there for anyone. And that was that.

— Ma! cried Rani, cheeks rosy and hair disheveled. We had such fun. I'm thirsty.

— Well then, drink.

They were at the foot of the cataract.

Rani shook her head, put a finger on her nose with the air of saying... She plunged her hands into the torrent to be sure.

— And Gringo?

He was there — suddenly — his bark belt around his hips, rosy too. Distances didn't exist: they measured non-existence, and how could what doesn't exist exist? It doesn't exist — that's all. Rani scratched her head, looked at Gringo. But "looking"... perhaps it is like that, the way a cloud looks at the rain — with masses of small droplets inside.

— You're beautiful, she said simply.

— What?

Gringo looked at Rani in return: it wasn't a very different Rani — she still had her small air of self-assurance, a little stubborn too, but there was sunshine inside, as if one had mixed honey and pomegranate juice well. And then it changed — took different tints: right now, it was like a penguin at the edge of the ice floe. She drank deeply and straightened up: "Aah!"

— Say, Ma — why are men caught in a net?

— Ah! little one — it's an old story... The doctors will tell you it's chromosomes.

— What are chromosomes?

— Coagulated habits. You know — like a mole digging its hole and tunnels.

— Can't you de-coagulate them?

— I can, but... Do they want to come out of their holes? These are art galleries for them, my little one! It's perfectly sacred. They'll create a huge fuss. They'll tell you it's not scientific at all, or not Catholic, or not rational, or not physiological — not... Not-not-not and not-not-not. In short — it's not reasonable at all.

— And if you un-reasoned them?

— That remains to be seen... Listen — I'll show you; it's simpler. We'll watch the film in reverse. Mind you, there isn't a beginning and an end — it's all times, at the same time: it depends on where one looks. If you look at a mouse hole, you are in the mouse hole.

— Then one must look well, said Rani.

She raised her nose to the sky, and whooosh! — all at once she had flown away: no one was there anymore.

— Ma, said Gringo pensively. What's happening out there in the clearing? Are you in the clearing too? Or what?

Ma looked toward the West, and presto!... The cardinal points were a matter of a glance, and it went in all directions, East to North and South to West, since North was wherever one wanted to go. The instant compass — like the Arctic bird with its North on a tropical lagoon. It was always North; one couldn't get lost.

They arrived in the clearing as evening fell; already the crickets and the pipa-pipa had resumed their orchestra. It was strange that whilst the sun was setting here, it was rising elsewhere; this did not make sense. How can a sun rise and set at the same time? Unless it is cut into pieces: a piece here, a piece there, half a step on either side of the globe. Men were decidedly pieces of man and quarter-meridians of the terrestrial world; they had truly lost their bearings and the roundness of the world, which floats and floats... in a great gentle swell with the whales and jingles of stars. But in true time, the sun set nowhere and the years did not age, since a morning was always morning, just as it was always North and always the contentment of being where one is. And if one is not content, one is not there — it's simple. One retreats into the bud; or like Rani, one slips away on tiptoe.

All the same, Gringo bent down and picked up a handful of earth — just to be sure. It was perfectly earthen. It even had a different quality than before: it was very distinct — as if each grain, each little blade of grass in it had its particular life. It was no longer a sort of neutral mass with a few sharper points seized by eyes: each point was sharp, alive. Gringo looked around him: the trees, the violet-wood, the fading rosy sky — and it was so alive, vibrant, and experienced all at the same time. One was inside everything, immediately. Truly, Gringo was looking at the earth for the first time; it had never been so intense — as if each thing had its own light within, its small lantern and its little window-pane to say hello.

Brujos entered the clearing with a skewer of agami around his neck. He looked pale. Kratu, Vrittru, and all the others returned one by one with their game, their fish, and their manioc roots: they all looked pale.

Gringo turned toward Ma with a kind of astonishment. She said nothing.

They were gris-gris - lifeless and deflated: dull skin over a sort of confused digestion. Psilla passed, very busy — saying a word to this one, to that one, with a slight air of authority. Gringo could not understand a word of her language. It was a sort of grating, very discordant sound: it had no meaning; it said nothing. The pipa-pipa meant something; the waterfall meant something; even a blade of grass meant something — there was a rhythm everywhere. And then this human language had no rhythm at all; it responded to nothing, called nothing. And no one saw them.

— Ma, asked Gringo. How is it that they don't even see us? Are we invisible? Could we by any chance be ghosts?

Gringo grabbed the tip of his nose — but it was perfectly concrete. Ma burst out laughing, thoroughly amused.

— Ghosts? Then I assure you there are numerous ghostly things in this world! Tell me — which side are the ghosts on?

Quino entered the clearing, looking pale and listless, his flute under his arm. And strangely,  he was less pale than the others; one could see him more clearly.

— You see, said Ma. He is already a little on the side of the ghosts! He remembers. It makes a little light inside.

— But why don't they see us?

— But with what eyes, little one! If they could see us, it would mean they had already come out of their net. With what eyes can a fish see a man — except in a fish's dream?

Gringo clapped his hands vigorously:

— Hello!

A woodpecker flew away. Not a man heard it.

— It's strange all the same... Are you sure we exist?

— But my little one — they are in their human dream, as others are in a fish's dream.

— But it's not a dream! exclaimed Gringo. That Vrittru gave me a nasty kick in the stomach;  in fact, my stomach no longer hurts.

— So what is real is what hurts the stomach! And Ma laughed and laughed.

— Yes — it's like that: what is real is what hurts. 

It must hurt for them to feel! Come now, little one — let's be serious: does a butterfly see a man? Does a serpent, a drop of water, a leaf in the wind see a man? They see in their own way a few colors or warmths or movements that interest or hinder them. And when Quino dreams with his flute, he vaguely senses "something": it hurts him. That is — he feels cramped; he is ill at ease in his skin. Well — that's it! One must be considerably ill at ease in one's skin to begin to see anything other than one's fish water or one's human air. And even then, it's all quite "vague."

— I remember, yes... But it was very soft too... I always sensed snow around me.

— You were experiencing the world from a man’s perspective. Besides, it's not another world: it's the same one, with other eyes and another speed.

At that moment Psilla came out right before them. She went straight toward a kind of pile of stones in the middle of the clearing, bent down slightly, and burned resin on it. Gringo understood nothing.

— You see, said Ma. They've made a hole and they honor me in it. Then She burst out giggling like a little girl:

— I am greatly honored. Gringo was dumbfounded.

— But you're not in there!

— But I am, my little one — I'm in there too.

— But it's not true!

— It's true for them. They keep me under lock and key: that way I'm not dangerous!

— But what is stopping you from coming out of there! You blow up their whole contraption and come out.

— They'll be terrified, my little one! They'll die standing. I'm not so cruel! I could perfectly well have chosen not to enter their hole.

— ??

— They wanted it that way. Listen, my little one — you still haven't understood anything about their net. I am not here to perform bewildering miracles; I am here to push them to get out of their net. Very well. It requires a reasonable dose of suffocation for them to want to get out. So I suffocate them little by little — or rather they suffocate themselves.

— But you, inside there — who are you?

— The pain of the earth. There was a silence.

— They love their pain — they don't want to let go of it. Look — I'll show you.

Suddenly, they both found themselves on the boulevard of a great city.

An immense, grey, endless crowd.

All at once, Gringo was in it.

— No, Ma! No! 

No one saw them.

— It's not possible, Ma — not possible! Oh! I'm not going to walk down this boulevard again, take the métro, begin all the gestures again — all the gestures...

Ma said nothing.

Suddenly Rani appeared in jeans, her ponytail blowing in the wind, all rosy as after a run.

— I had such fun! I tied a string to Chacko's antlers and we slid-and-slid in the snow...

She stopped dead.

— But what is all this? What's the matter with all of them?... It's mad! She grabbed Gringo by the arm and shook him:

— It's mad! Tell me it's mad... Gringo said nothing.

— Come on, Gringo...

She looked right, looked left.

Now tears began to run down her cheeks. She shook her head without a word — it was all veiled, it was dreadful. And men, still more men with their briefcases, women, still more women wearing pointed heels. Gringo said nothing; he watched.

He stared until his eyes felt like bursting — with such deep pain in the heart, as if he were swallowing the dead and the dead and endless sorrows and thousands of shadows standing there, arms hanging, at the edge of a pavement forever, through lives and lives of shadows, for nothing — with a métro at the end, and it begins again: La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle station, everyone gets off — but it's a joke! One always gets back on. And it continues.

— It's frightening, murmured Gringo.

Rani said no more — she was white as a dead woman, both hands clutched around nothing.

Ma said nothing. She watched. Then She approached Rani gently, and said to her with infinite tenderness:

— Do you want to go back and see Chacko?

Rani shook her head. She was lost in a kind of cataclysm and shook her head, shook her head like a sleepwalker.

— And you, little one — do you want to?

Gringo shook his head, shook his head. Then he took Rani's hand, looked at that crowd, looked at Ma:

— I'm staying back to cry with them!

Then he turned toward that gray crowd and let out such a heart-rending cry that the whole crowd stopped suddenly as if their own hearts were crying.

They turned around. They looked right, looked left. They looked again. They had two black holes where their eyes had been. They stared into their abyss, all at once.

There was an eerie silence in that stationary crowd.

Gringo squeezed Rani's hand as though he was identified with the men condemned to death, the prison-bars and endless bars, the tortured nights of waiting for footsteps in the corridor. And then the dawn with a bird's cry — the door opens.

Gringo cried.

He cried from the depths of the endless dead, the strangled bodies, the beaten bodies, the violated bodies. From the depths of nights and nights without respite, from the depths of hearts and hearts riddled with holes.

Then the crowd looked once more at where that cry came from. They looked into their own heart, all at once. They looked at their own night, all at once.

Their black eyes rolled on the ground. There was a flame inside.

A little something.

A child cried out. Another child cried out.

They dropped their books, dropped their black briefcases. They dropped their arms. A null minute.

Then Rani murmured like a sleepwalker — with the tiniest breath, a tiny cry at the end: "No!"

A tiny insignificant cry. And their eyes of flame opened. Then a formidable cry seized the earth and from the depths of death they cried: NO !