Gringo

XXXVI

THE WEFT

THEY entered the violet gorge.

It was very deep, bordered by great ferns. The noise was deafening. They seemed so small — all three of them — so white in that enormous fissure covered with mauve lichens. An eagle flew off with a cry. Gringo raised his head and watched. And at the same time, it was very silent, as if entering a ceremony. At the far end, the cataract lit from above looked like a column of light. The three of them advanced as if through the corridors of Thebes — and other corridors at the end of the long march, when time crumbles and becomes as soft as a bird's feet on white sands.

They arrived at the foot of the cataract. Great black boulders spurted with foam, humping their backs like motionless guardians. Ma let go of the children's hands, went around the rock. The water flowed white and smooth, like a mirror.

— Follow me.

She stretched out her hands and crossed the liquid mirror. Gringo took Rani's hand — it was very soft.

They crossed the liquid mirror.

The noise seemed to have been blocked behind a wall. A pale light illuminated the immense basalt fissure — as if cut by a thunderclap; the sharp ridges glistened. Ma went ahead, almost luminous in the half-dark. Gringo could no longer feel his leg, no longer feel any pain: everything was strangely motionless in his body and tranquil — so tranquil that he felt he had no weight. The weight was only the old vibration. There was no more vibration; there was only a slow, gentle movement, like a swan gliding on the water and sinking slowly into its own snow. And far, very far away, in a silence so deep it seemed to come back through eternities of crystal, one could hear a low tolling of a bell.

The fissure narrowed. Ma stopped. Now it was like an opaque veil — one could barely make out pale glimmers on the basalt ridges. Gringo felt something cold and sticky, covering his body like a net. Rani was squeezing his hand very tightly.

— Now you are at the limits of your body, said Ma in a neutral voice. Gringo was trying to extricate himself from this sticky web.

— Don't try, said Ma. That is not how it is done... You see — you are well-prepared, she added with that small irony that never left her. Simply push and advance.

Gringo pushed and advanced, step by step. Suddenly Vrittru appeared — all black and menacing.

— You shall not pass — you have no right to pass. Gringo looked at him:

— You can go to hell!

— Show me your power. Are you greater than the Law?

And Vrittru seemed to grow more and more enormous as he spoke and Gringo listened.

— Do you know that you will die if you pass?

— I'm not afraid of dying.

— And you, little snake? he said, addressing Rani.

— You're ugly, she said simply.

— Well then, try. You are all alone — Ma has abandoned you; you are in the illusion. And Ma had indeed disappeared.

It was completely dark now — breathing was difficult; Gringo could feel the cold edges and the net around him. The fissure was closing in on itself. Rani gasped. And the tolling of bells seemed to grow louder.

Gringo and Rani were pushing without advancing. They pushed but the net kept snapping back like an elastic band. It was suffocating.

— Hey, Vrittru sneered, you want to leave the Tribe...

— It was you who drove me out.

— You want to get out of the Law — you're "fed up with being a man."

— Yes.

— But you can't get out, little one! he said in an almost gentle tone. You die and that is all; and then you begin again. The body decomposes. Have you ever seen an iguana fly?

— I've never seen it, but I know.

— Have you ever seen a bird emerge from a man?

— I've never seen it, but I know.

— What do you want to become?

— I don't know, but I know.

— And what is the way out? Do you know the way? Is there even a way? Gringo did not answer.

It was silence again — and that rising sound of the bell. He could barely feel Rani's hand. The way — what was the way?

He pushed that black, sticky thing — and it came back.

— Ma! he cried. No one answered.

— Ah! you see, said the voice in the night. She is dead too.

— That is not true! said Rani — and there was such an intensity in that small voice that Vrittru fell silent, and everything fell silent for a moment.

— You are all alone in the illusion, he resumed.

— Well then — I would rather die in this illusion than live in your certainty, said Gringo.

— Really?... Then act according to your folly. And he disappeared.

"The way — what is the way?" Gringo kept repeating.

— Rani!

She did not answer; he felt her frozen hand. Gringo pushed and pushed against this thing which was like the very mesh of his own body. "But you will die if you get out — she will die." Then Gringo stopped: there was no other way, there was nothing — only this suffocating pressure and the sound of the bell rising and rising in the night. He was at the end of life.

— Ma! he cried again.

No one answered. "She is dead, she is dead," he heard in his ears, "there is only death at the end — death at the end..." He gasped; a cold sweat covered his body. "Are you sure you don't want to go back to the daylight? You know — the crickets on the igapó, you know?..."

Then Gringo moved no more — tried no more to pull at those meshes. He pressed himself close to that heart still beating inside — that hollow of warmth at the bottom.

It was like warm gold in a black, cold matrix. There was no more desire in his heart, no more hope in his heart, no more prayer — or the prayer was that gold itself beating and beating still; the hope was that gold itself; the path or no-path was that gold — only that gold; that is all that remains in the world: a small beating of gold beneath the cold night. And Ma, Rani, were only that small breath at the bottom — without word, without hope, without despair, without anything that has or has no value. A small fire burning, a nothing-at-all burning — and even at the bottom of hell, it was there; it was the only thing that is. Gringo sank in there.

He said farewell to life, farewell to Ma, farewell to Rani. He said farewell to the sun and to all the suns.

And it was like a sun — a very tiny sun at the bottom. It was warm and full.

Like a golden ray in a small drop of being. It was of an almost frightening density.

And motionless.

Everything had stopped there.

Then Gringo closed his eyes — he said farewell to Gringo. And it was suddenly infinitely peaceful. He heard something like a child's voice, far away, saying with such purity, such charm — in a crystalline tone, as if it were self-evident, like a smile at the end: "Everything is beautiful."

And then there was nothing but that Beauty. It was transparent, it was light.

It asked for nothing, it took nothing. It was.

It was like love. Pure. For nothing. With nothing.

It gazed with wide eyes of infinity. It was innocent.

It had no size, no measure, no grandeur. It was a simple beating — a beating of gold, but not like gold: like pure purity. And so light that it was everywhere; so beautiful that it was like love in everything — simple, self-evident: a myriad of small golden beatings swelling, unfolding to love everywhere, embrace everything, dance everywhere, to be infinitely an infinitude of small pure joys — for nothing, because it is beautiful to be, it is charming to be, and to be again and everywhere and always. There was no more Gringo: there was a myriad of small dense bubbles like so many small suns of joy swelling, swelling, passing through everything, smiling at everything, blossoming with an infinite ease — as if breathing through thousands of pores of joy, shooting everywhere like millions of golden hummingbirds suddenly released into a cherry tree.

And Gringo passed right through the weft. It was an immense golden carillon.

Ma was there. Rani was there.

There was a golden door before them.

— Well — you're not dead! she said with her small look of mischief. Come — now I'm going to show you the new world. Oh! not so new: it's very old, but one didn't realise it.

And with a laugh She opened the golden door. She didn't need to open it: it popped open like a champagne bottle.

— Phew! I was hot, said Gringo.

— That was all the falsehood sticking to you, said Ma. The "Law," as Vrittru calls it. A legal and irrefutable Lie. Now open your eyes and behold!... Which side do you want to start from: the end, the middle, the beginning? Because it's all at the same time!... Come now — don't make that face.

Then She began to laugh as if She saw something:

— One day I'll free them all like you, and they'll make a funny face!