Gringo

AND the game began anew.

It was once, a hundred million years ago, after countless times and countless lost tales — sorrows and joys, fabulous triumphs, gigantic collapses, and that little joy still sprouting, still sprouting, like the secret flower of all these worlds and stars. A million stars, a million worlds, and this labor of a small sprout—always, of man or bird, or pink iguana on the bank of a stream, or a species not yet born under the gaze of great, restless stars.

Little child of man, will you be the one for whom this great game was launched, for whom this small joy clothed itself in a million sorrows and adornments — or will your journey have to begin again beneath the great unsatisfied stars?

It was once again a hundred million years ago: prophets had come and gone; triumphs of gold, of steel; irrefutable truths; salvations and salvations on other planets; little children who die, who die—that is for later. Later.

When will that be?

The tale of all tales, the “here it is at last.” Or will we never get there… never?

A tiny little shoot clinging to a rock, tender, green, like a cluster of stars in the bubbling torrent, drinking in the water, the light, playing and playing for no one to see, for no hummingbird ever born, no man yet to come — purely green... “More, more,” it whispers, “always, always” in the delight of cool water flowing toward the sea.

For a tiny green seaweed, do these galaxies spin?

They have always spun, they will always spin, but when will they spin for the joy of a little child of man, purely?

And the Earth says: “Let’s try again.”

I

THE GREAT VOYAGE

SO then, in an obscure Antarctic continent, the earth trembled. Geysers of fire erupted to the sky. The cries of birds and monkeys fell silent in a leaden hush as clouds swollen with rain and lightning came to wrap the green hills in a soft shroud. And the earth broke its moorings.

It began to groan like a gigantic barge run aground on a shattered basalt reef, oscillating, releasing from a thousand sudden crevasses a hissing of angry lava and boiling water; slowly, it rolled on its granite hull, leaving a petrified Australia behind in port, and put to sea in a devastation of foam.

Perhaps some forgotten seagull let out a last cry in the wild rigging of the old world. The earth slid into the blue waters, leaving behind a trail of sunken emeralds. Other fragments sank hull and all with their precarious wisdoms and a few arrogant triumphs, while a tiny green alga clinging to its rock and some few men, perhaps, with their great dreaming eyes, drifted on a smooth, pink India toward a barbarous continent.

The stars rolled on as usual, the eons, the tranquil ages. The immense raft forgot a rustling, heavy strip of Africa in an enormous rumble, continuing its course westward, always westward, laden with crackling thunder and a timid hope like the beat of a wing.

This was America, like a great green shark letting slip a silver fin in the tumult of the waters. It was a hundred million years before this era or after this era — so many vain, cruel, thirsty eras, restless, marching, ever marching toward a little child of man or iguana who might find a stilled heart, perhaps a new heart that would gather all the stars and all the tales of all the stars in its light net.

What then was the purpose of the great voyage across so many sorrows and sunken pyramids and small children of children, dead-dead-dead — for what? For the glory of which heaven, which god, which cannon, which sepulcher of prehistoric wisdom or indubitable electronics? Where is the land? Where is the earth of a tiny green alga, purely green, purely singing and delicious — of a little child of man or another man purely himself on the bank of the great torrent?

With one last heave of its shoulder, the old raft sank into the shallows of the Pacific, raising a cataclysm of foam and snow, like some Himalaya over there, tranquil for some impassive gaze, consenting eternally to the slow labor of joy amid the faded cries of monkeys and small, avid men.

Once more, the story began.

II

GRINGO AND THE GREEN SERPENT

THE rain fell — immense, equatorial, endless — on the great green swell of the Amazon rainforest, washing each little leaf of a million trees, like a caress for each one, like a warm shiver on the soft skin of the hills, washing away sorrows, ages, memories, rolling enormous spongy rivers and small waterfalls, alike, imperturbable, merciful, carrying the living and the dead and the days upon days in one liquid cascade — now and then torn by the raucous cry of a macaw that rang out suddenly like a first wound of life against an eternity of silence.

And the swell again, the rain again, the immense murmur like a prayer.

Then all fell silent.

It was the sun — the forest suddenly like a frothy delirium bursting with a thousand greens, a shimmering torrent lit by a myriad of pearls, a rush of scents in a chaos of dead wood and ferns.

A sharp ray pierced a clearing.

There was a little child of man, there, alone, pensive, cheeks resting in his hands, sitting at the edge of the igapó.¹

He was naked, save for a bracelet of shells below his right knee. His skin was copper-colored like the reflection of the sun on a balsa trunk. His body was wiry like a liana, perfectly still. He was called Gringo — "the stranger." He was perhaps fifteen, and water dripped from his brown hair. His forehead was high and broad as that of an icon. Nothing moved. Two intense eyes gazed at... what?

The future, the past? Or that single drop of water clinging to the soft moss of the balsa.

Then a cricket began to sing in a high branch above the igapó, another cricket, another, answering each other far off beneath the great jagged vault of sunlight: a deep sound that rose, rose, intertwined, held fast in an immense piercing note covering the whole igapó, plunging through the rosy pillars, losing itself in a labyrinth of lianas, then dying away in the distance on the first slopes of the serra — only to return again, flooding the tranquil igapó with its single sharp, stubborn, tireless note, like a crackling tide or like a prayer from the depths of lost ages.

¹ Igapó: an interior lake or swamp.

He started, and — zzt! — a skillful arrow whistled past his ear and pinned a little green serpent, so pretty!, green as a newly-born shoot, to the tree trunk before him.

Like a violation.

The serpent writhed around the arrow, knotted itself. Gringo had not moved — he had known.

His heart was clenched only with a sharp pang.

Dead branches cracked, and then that odious laugh, enormous, bellying:

— Well then, Gringo, not scared?

— “You're wasting your arrows”, Gringo replied simply, without releasing his cheeks. But his hands had gone white. 

Then he added calmly:

— You're not going to eat Jacko, are you? 

The man, furious, wrenched his arrow from the trunk, nearly slipped in the warm mud of the small lake, freed Jacko from the shaft and threw him on Gringo's knees.

— The next one will be for you. The igapó is mine.

And the man walked off with a spongy splashing.

Slowly, the little child of man took the serpent in his hands: it was still trembling. Then he closed his eyes. The crickets resumed their high, tireless note over the gold-flecked igapó.

III

THE CAVE

IT was like a cave, deep and dark. Gringo pressed and pressed against the wall — all his pain was gathered there. And it was like so many, many sorrows gathered together, one didn't know where they came from. It had no name, no meaning, but it ached deeply; it was perhaps old — oh! yes, it was very old, certainly as old as the growth of a whole tree, perhaps even of many trees. It reached far-far back there, at the bottom of this dark cave. And Gringo pressed and pressed against the wall. The little green serpent was cold and limp against his thigh. He was dead. This was death: a cave of pain. Gringo climbed and climbed the length of the cave — it was endless. There was not a sound, there was nothing — only pain, pure. For nothing. The walls were made of pain. And it was so old, this was what Gringo did not understand, as if all at once he bore the whole weight of... one does not know — there had been many times a little dead serpent on his thigh, birds, entire tribes dead, murdered, like his own. Death was very old. It was a very old cave. And a man's loud laugh — oh! that laugh... all the pain was in it. It was loneliness in the forest, suddenly — nothing communicated anymore. This was Gringo, alone: Gringo "the stranger." But I don't want this!

And Gringo clutched his little dead serpent, pressing and pressing against the wall of this cave, as if one had to go all the way to the end — never again could he open his eyes and whistle in the forest with this cave at the bottom of his heart. One cannot live with death inside! He had to kill death.

Suddenly, it was the bottom of the cave. A smooth, completely black wall, like beneath the waterfall up there on the slope of the serra. There was nothing to be done — it was black forever.

A parrot's cry rang out far away, outside. Life, the forest. But it would never be the same again. It would never be life again: it was rotten at the bottom.

Then Gringo opened his hands, released his little serpent. Gringo sank into naked pain. Everything became very still, beyond all cries, beyond even sorrow — for what? It was no longer sorrow, it was nothing — a mass of silence, almost suffocating, as if his life would stop right there, as if all his being was gathered in a small, poignant corner, so poignant, and so fragile, so fragile — like a tiny breath at the bottom, oh! very ancient too, rejoining all the dead tribes and all the dead serpents and all the dead of the dead: the place where it begins. A first light breath beneath layers and layers of black. There was no more meaning there. There was only a small pure breathing, like a forgetting of everything save this tiny pulsing point.

A forgetting of everything.

It was warm, it was soft, this little spot, like the hollow of a nest. Like the beginning of the world.

It was like "I love," purely. It was the only thing that was.

Then there was a tear at the bottom of the cave. A tiny white gleam like a cloud. It was completely round, completely soft; it seemed he was drawn in there. He sank into the white well. The walls fell, dissolved; there was no more cave, there was no more death — what a strange thing! And it grew and grew, Gringo was as if filled with a white fluffiness, a foam of light soft as pollen: it contracted, dilated, contracted, dilated... a warm beating like a bird's heart, but filling everything — everything. There was no more Gringo: the world was a white pulsation that made a little serpent, a basilisk, a leaf in the wind and a little child of man, and all one might wish.

It was even a little golden. One might have said another life.

Or the same, but so different.

— Haï!

He nearly toppled. A warm hand held his shoulder. His eyes fluttered. The little green serpent slipped between his fingers and swam away into the igapó.

Before his nose was a round face with a red headband. It was Quiño, his friend.

— Well, you have a strange look about you!

He was perhaps thirteen, his skin was like dark gold. He had a flute in his hand. They burst out laughing together and it was so good to laugh.

Night was falling; the whole igapó had covered itself in rosy shimmer. The mosquitoes came to murmur in their ears and bite.¹ Gringo gathered his bark covering and wrapped himself in a single gesture. He was beautiful, standing straight against the rose-bathed trunks.

— You look like you've come from the snow mountains, like Ma. 

¹ Mosquitoes.

The frogs began to tune their instruments first a little silver hammer, quite clear, quite alone, then dozens, then deep raspings. The song of the night was beginning.

— Quiño... what if we knew how to fly?

Quiño raised his nose, sniffed the air, and scratched his ear.

— Well... I'd better ask my flute about that.

He scratched his ear again, pulled his headband to the center of his forehead:

— We've got nothing to eat tonight. 

Silently, they took the path back to the carbet.¹ 

But something remained written like fire on Gringo's forehead: "One must kill death."

And all at once he thought: "But damn it! — my serpent was dead!"

¹ Carbet: a hut, a camp.

IV

THE GREAT BREATH

The Hunger.

Gringo did not want to be hungry — it was humiliating. It was disgusting. But all the same...

The tiny sunbirds¹ were not hungry: they fluttered and fluttered as if dancing in place, and then — ploc! — they kissed the flower's calyx in one swift move, as if by stealth, as one laughs, because it was pretty, and besides a lone flower needs company. But the salted pirarucu²... from father to son. Besides, he had no father. So he wasn't a son — what was he? Neither crocodile, nor sunbird, nor Tucanoan Indian. In short, a nonexistent bastard. But still...

— Will you get the hell out of here! Good for nothing...

A man's voice grumbled behind the carbet. A wisp of blue smoke rose in the sky.

¹ Sunbird: hummingbird.

² Pirarucu: a fish.

— Can't hunt, can't weave, can't fish... huh?

If Gringo was even alive today, it was through the grace of the Elder Woman; otherwise he would have been dead long ago, along with his whole tribe, in some hole on the Rio Xingu. "That one is mine," she had said, and no one argued with the Elder Woman — though... grumblings had been heard about it for some time.

Gringo walked away at a slow pace, dignified, nonchalant, the ever-present bark-cloth hanging around his neck like a stole. He was slender with long muscles, as if he hid them. He knew very well how to climb trees, but he never said so. And besides, what use is it?

He leapt over a dead log in a precise bound, like a marsh deer, hesitated a moment at the igapó path: a turtle egg wouldn't be bad. "The igapó is mine."

Mine, mine... me and you. It was a strange world, all the same. Was the sunbird "me", was the jacuaru, the big pamba?¹ Where did "me" begin? — Gringo, he was terribly "me" from time to time — that was what made the pain.

— Psst!

He stopped dead. A small laugh burst from the undergrowth.

¹ Jacuaru: a large lizard. Pamba: a serpent.

It was Rani, Quiño's sister, of course — with her almond eyes slanted like a bird's feather in the middle of her brown cheeks.

Without a word, she held out a machete to him and disappeared in a crackling of dead twigs.

A man without a machete isn't a man, is he — or what is he? In any case, not a Tucanoan. He shrugged and walked on a little, looked toward the east, toward the north... the savannas or the serra? No — it was the waterfall he wanted, that his feet wanted. Strangely, in these moments, it was always Gringo's feet that decided. His feet knew better than he did. This morning his feet had decided on the waterfall, but there was something else behind it — he wasn't quite sure what — something drawing him.

He tied his bark-cloth around his waist and began to walk... and then suddenly there was no more Gringo.

There were long, serpentine roots, like a pipeline — he knew exactly where to cut, and clac! clac! - a juicy piece of stump in his hands, his head thrown back, he drank eagerly: it was fresh as life itself, it flowed through his body like a sparkling little stream, aah! more, more... He felt himself swelling visibly like the stem of the water lily in the igapo.

The forest began to become an immense igapó where one flowed, pumped sap, touched everything a little through a thousand tiny delicate fibers and membranes — a savory and light forest. Gringo walked, but it was a strange thing that walked, as if his legs had taken possession of him, faster and faster, faster and faster: his shell bracelet clattered. There were long sipos¹ hanging across the path, and hop! Dead wood, treacherous fresh-cut roots already covered with a bouquet of leaves, and hop! One sensed the forest through a thousand small pores, one wasn't quite sure whether they belonged to the liana, the wood, or the mossy rock, nor whether it was the serpent saying "Watch out" or the foot simply stepping over — a big thing, all coiled, motionless and perfectly dull-colored, and hop! One was already far off, among other stems and brambles... quick-quick, it was a flash of sensation, a strange precision, everything responded. Gringo was panting a little, and then it was bothersome, this breath still making a Gringo in there with a little rattle of shells. There, that was the last move: "Go." — Go, that was the Sesame. Then he leaned a little forward, one last time his muscles tensed... like a threshold to cross. And then came the great breath. That was so amusing!

¹ Sipo: a liana.

The whole forest breathed through him, or he through the forest, and there was no more him, no more trunks, no more stumps or rocks: it walked on its own — it was a single thing that was the leg and the stone and the little serpent the color of dead wood and a multitude of things everywhere, and so full of joy in the legs and in the stone — and hop! — one didn't know what passed over what: it barely touched the ground. Then something seized in the lungs, like a gust of delight or laughter — oh! a joy, a joy to close the eyes over, a breath, a rhythm, one could see nothing anymore, one could recognize nothing — it was an immense, light plunge into a great exhalation that was like laughter; a fizzing of laughter, immense, countless, everywhere, exhilarating, rustling like sap and waterfall, flowing like the serpent, trembling with the leaf... Then one lifted off — feet no longer touching the ground — the world opened — one entered the dance.

A light breath that was like the very breath of the world. 

Splash!

He let himself fall to the ground: She was there.

V

THE ENCOUNTER

SHE was incredibly beautiful.

Upright, hieratic against the high curtain of the forest. White. As if made of whiteness. Wrapped in a sort of shawl of no known bark — something from elsewhere. White too, with a little honey in it. Was she tall or short? Old or young? One entered another world. It was strangely still. There was no more sound, nothing vibrating — one entered into Her as into a clearing of light, and then one was held there, seized, as if sinking into motionless centuries; there was no longer me or you, here or elsewhere, neither "I was" nor "I will be" — one was gone, dissolved into a white, boundless softness, as if climbing back through time, ages, sorrows, on a slow wingbeat, forever, above the forests, the lives, the deaths — infinitely into a cloud of gentle light. And then a great gaze at the end, like a well of smiles opening up. Then it was home forever, sheltered forever, and everything was recognized, understood, loved in a total yes; the heart melted, pierced by lightning, beating suddenly with a million wings.

No one knew where She came from. Some said from the white mountains to the West, which held back the sun. No one knew her age. She was as old as the forest and all the tribes that had been born. And then she was so young all at once — her face breaking into a little girl's laugh, crystalline, mischievous. Oh! how she mocked.

— Well then, little one, have your wings grown?

Gringo ran his tongue to the corner of his mouth, sniffled a little. And suddenly he cried out, coming back to himself:

— Ma! but who are you?

Then She began to laugh, and with each laugh a wrinkle fell away, another wrinkle, rounding her cheeks and hollowing a little dimple in the middle — she was fifteen: exactly Gringo's age.

— Give me your hand... You know, I'm real! 

And she chuckled.

For a moment Gringo hesitated, ran his hand through his hair... The image of a little old woman bent double, crossing the Abattis¹ with her ever-present bag of herbs and roots, flashed in his head... And instantly the little old woman was there — not little, no: quite formidable, with that white light still seeming to envelop her like the fine mist at dawn over the tranquil igapó. She was "the Elder Woman."

¹ Abattis: a clearing of felled trees where the camp is pitched.

Gringo rubbed his eyes.

She sat beside him on the rock, pulled out her bag, opened it, searched among the herbs, the stones, the brown roots. There was a ray of sunlight on her neck. Gringo's heart was strangely moved. And without knowing what he was doing, he seized that very white hand with its small amethyst veins, and kissed it.

She smiled from the corner of her eye, rummaged again in her bag.

— Ma, I saw the snow well in the cave... and then Jacko left, quite alive.

He cleared his throat, for he was always a little shy before Her. One could hear the sound of the waterfall nearby.

— Here, she said, look carefully... Do you see these little ones?

She placed three small green shoots in the hollow of his right hand.

— One finds them under the waterfall. They cling to the rock... And these two pebbles — do you see the little stars inside them? Give me your hand.

She began rubbing one pebble against the other: a little powder fell into Gringo's hand.

— These are found in the riverbed. But you mustn't take them when they're beginning to turn green or brown — there must be many little stars inside. And then...

She took the three shoots, kneaded them well with a finger in the palm of her hand, made a small green ball that she mixed with the powder in the hollow of Gringo's hand.

— Now eat — you won't be hungry anymore. And She smiled again.

There was that white softness around her face, those narrow eyes filtering mockery and tenderness. Those eyes fascinated Gringo: they were never the same.

Without a word, he took the little green ball; it crunched slightly under his teeth from the powder, but... how fresh and astringent it was! — as if one were tasting the small rainbow of the torrent.

— Ma, you know...

He drew a breath; there were heaps of words and questions jostling inside him — he had to get them all out at once before they slipped back into the cave.

— They hate me.

— “That's to force you to be greater”, she cut in. 

And She could be as blunt as she was tender.

— Ma, I would like...

That word was so swollen with unspeakable things, as if all these silent hours and days listening to the sounds of the forest made up a music all his own, Gringo's.

— Ma, we've been here a long, long time listening to the crickets, the waterfall, the red  monkeys in the night. We listen... to what? The trees also listen for a long, long time: to the rain, the hummingbirds, the cry of the little tinamou. What do we listen to — what is there at the end, beyond the silence, as if it comes from far-far away, perhaps from the snow mountains out there? As if it resonated far, far away, without noise, without words. And it burns inside. I always want to walk, to leave, as if I'm about to find... what? What is at the end of the silence, there, when the crickets have gone quiet and it continues; what is at the end of the rain, when the rain has gone quiet in the leaves and it continues; what is at the end of the red  monkeys when they've left into the night and it continues — Ma, it's as if one didn't exist! One is over there, over there, where it hasn't yet come to be. And if I walk, it is still beyond walking. To the West, there are still trees and trees; to the South, to the North, everywhere there are crickets and more crickets, the hummingbirds, the Jacaré¹ — it is AFTER, do you understand? What is at the end? The balsas, the sipos, the violet-woods²: they grow and grow, they will always be trees... It's mad, Ma! And then I, Gringo, I will always be Gringo: the salted pirarucu and the farinha³, and the farinha and the salted pirarucu, and then they'll burn me, and then there'll be other little Gringos, always Gringo — and I'll listen again to what is beyond the silence, beyond the crickets, beyond the red  monkeys and the rain, the rain again. Oh! Ma, tell me what is after — tell me! Is there anything after, or will it always burn?

He spoke, and silence fell back, beaded with a little eternal waterfall that beads and will bead again when the Gringos are no more and other Gringos are there, the same — a man is millions of men, like the violet-woods through the centuries of centuries, until the day the planet sows its cargo of men and pain and one starts again... one Atlantis, two Atlantises — a little red parrot, a swallow and a little child of man with his question again in a clearing where the pretty waterfall beads.

¹ Jacaré: caiman. ² Violet-wood: amaranth. ³ Farinha: (manioc) flour.

— Oh! little one...

She joined her hands on her knees, closed her eyes: She was enveloped in white light and a smile. One might have said the Mother of all times leaning over her little children of man.

— I was waiting for you for a long time — you who burn for the earth. I was waiting... I am the Old Woman of time, I have waited in more than one clearing. I have been burned, buried more than once; I have toiled, searched in more than one man; I have been killed, adored, hated so many times; I came and went with wisdoms upon wisdoms that change nothing, with secrets and miracles that sink to the bottom of the waters... 

The rain began again, dense, warm, like an endless murmur. Small diamond drops ran from her hair knotted at the nape of her neck. She looked like a statue of gentle light leaning forward with a smile.

— But my secret is in no miracle, no magic powder, no wisdom — my secret is in your question, little one.

And She opened her hands upon her knees.

— I waited and waited for your question through so many little Gringos — and how long it takes for a burning to ripen, how many sorrows upon sorrows it requires... They venerated me, they buried me under their garlands of sweet jasmine and their prayers for small blessings and dubious triumphs — plenty of pirarucu, plenty of farinha, and pretty babies... or pretty reveries over drowsy immensities. But who, little one, who knew how to burn long enough to wrest the Secret, burning for nothing, burning in the walking and in the silence, burning step by step and day by day to ripen this single question of the earth and to force the walls of the little child of man?

— Tell me! Tell me the Secret!

She opened her eyes wide, like doors of diamond over a blue lake.

— One does not tell the Secret: one BECOMES the Secret.

— Tell me — I can bear it no longer!

— Watch the rain for a long time: become the rain. Watch the bird for a long time: become the bird. Watch the nothing that is there beyond the silence for a long time: become that something which is at the end of everything. At the end of everything...

— Ma, my heart aches.

— Little one, you are mine and I will carry you to my new earth.

— But it is far!

— It is in a single second.

Then Gringo seized that hand with its small amethyst veins, so seemingly white:

— I will not let you go.

— No, you will not let me go. Never. Whether here or there, with or without this hand you are holding, I will lead you to my living Secret, to the end of the cry of the crickets and the red  monkeys, to the end of a little child of man — to where the man after man begins. I have spoken.

She rose. She was tall and straight and white. Her immense eyes were open like a doorway of light. The wind blew through the clearing. A tiny drop beaded on Gringo's nose. It was a hundred million years ago behind a curtain of trees and rain. It was like a second that shone — that still shines in every little child of man thirsting for the Secret.

Who wants, who wants the Secret?

— Will I see you again?

— Each time you have taken a step forward.

VI

AND SPLASH!

NOW Gringo knew.

His life had been overturned by a cataclysm more profound than the day when, in some clearing, a first creature fell to thinking — or was it the same cataclysm, from age to age? A first eel, a first seal, an oriole, a shrew, a yellow butterfly fluttering: each time the world burst open as if it had never seen itself. One wild glance. Everything stopped, changed color — the world was no longer as usual. It was a formidable sudden question: there was the man after man — and what is that?

A bare moment of stillness. Was the Earth, passing from creature to creature, seeking to look at itself differently — ever more so?

Gringo plunged his hands into the torrent, looked at his hands; he saw his face like a copper smear that stretched, smoothed, then scattered all at once in a swirl of tiny bubbles. Gringo was suddenly a formidable mystery. Even his eyes had widened; the ferns, the soaking lianas, the big glistening boulders emerged one by one with their smallest detail, drawn from their usual tangled picture, and posed a question to him. Everything looked at him. It was almost menacing, this silence that enveloped things — even the translucent little aiguillette, motionless, belly to the rock. Nothing was made anymore for eating, drinking, walking, clinging, or counting the sun's descent through the green tiers of the great kapok tree — everything was made for something else. But what? Did some first small, pensive creature in the old Carboniferous look differently at its drifting earth? It looked and looked, and Gringo looked and looked. It was almost painful, this gaze.

Gringo felt suddenly formidably alone.

And how does one become the man after man? — there, all alone, with millions of trees that begin and begin again and millions of small creatures that go on and on, and a few tribes as usual and forever? How does it change — how? What? Could it even change — and from what angle?

At the water's surface, motionless, between pebbles ringed with bubbles, he spotted two yellow eyes with a black ridge in between: it was Jacaré. A baby caiman looking at him, furrowing its horny brows — a feast. Caiman tail was succulent. If Vrittru the arrogant had been there with his mean arrows, it would have been over quickly... Gringo eased his hand gently into the cool current — has anyone ever caught a caiman by putting fingers in its mouth? Gringo didn't know what he was doing — he had no notion even of catching the caiman; perhaps he wanted to play? He looked at those two small yellow eyes sunk in a triangle of scales; he looked at nothing and everything. And all at once his whole body filled with a cool, perfectly clear stillness, like the water of the torrent — so motionless, deliciously motionless, with all those little bubbles running along his back and the rocks; there was no back really, there was no rock, no hand playing in the cool water: there was a great limpid body stretching and stretching in the torrent, bubbling with the bubbles in a myriad of small bursts of light, caught in a lattice of algae and sliding still on the belly among the small undulating aiguillettes and the pebbles smooth as polished centuries.

And splash! He fell headfirst into the torrent, opened a great mouth like an overfilled gargoyle, spat, cut his hand on a rock, and came out of the water shaking himself like a giant anteater. He was frozen and perfectly Gringo.

The baby caiman had disappeared; water was dripping from his nose.

A man was perfectly encased in a waterproof skin. That was it. And one couldn’t get out of it.

So from where does one get out of it?

He rested his chin in the hollow of his hands and gazed for a long time. 

A clamour arose from the camp.

VII

THE CHALLENGE

THE whole tribe was in a state of agitation.

From a distance, Gringo spotted Vrittru, the arrogant, gesticulating in the middle of a growling crowd. The women squawked and cackled in the clearing like a routed flock of agamis.¹ Others sat in silence. Gringo knew at once: it entered through every pore of his skin as if he had swallowed it whole — war. Fear. Threat. Murder. It was written in his blood with the first breath he had drawn in the world.

A small white shape remained alone to one side, motionless as the egret on the tall mangrove stems.

Gringo drew closer. He knew — it was all decided. He had a strange way of knowing; something stopped, fixed itself in him, as if the moment were cut from the scene and everything was seen microscopically in the smallest detail: "This will be." Or else it flowed straight through. He approached Vrittru slowly, like a bird approaching a serpent.

¹ Agamis: forest guinea fowl.

The man turned in one piece.

He was powerfully built, his legs slightly apart like a fighter ready to spring; his black hair was cut high on the forehead and fell in a mane. He had a black bracelet above his right bicep, another at his wrist twisted like a liana, and a puma skin at his groin.

— Don't be afraid, Gringo, he said in a jeering tone. 

Gringo parted the crowd and came to stand before him.

— Have you ever seen me run away?

There was a silence. Vrittru was powerful, but there was something around Gringo that created a void. He was small, slender among those men — but one felt an invisible steelines that made him as sure as an arrow.

A piha¹ began to screech in a branch.

Vrittru looked at Gringo, and that gleaming gaze gripped Gringo's heart like a pain. It was always that pain — incomprehensible. And so old.

— You are as agile as the douroucouli² in the night — no one is faster than you, Gringo...

¹ Piha: a harpy eagle. ² Douroucouli: a small nocturnal monkey.

His gruff voice grew caressing. Once, Gringo had watched him stroke a captive little douroucouli and strangle it in one move. For nothing.

— Surely, he went on, your age is tender and you are highly protected — but if you showed us a little of your art that surpasses our barbarous occupations...

— Enough, said Gringo. I'm ready.

There was a murmur. A few heads turned toward the small white form sitting silently on the violet-wood trunk. Vrittru barked:

— They are four hours' march to the West. Brujos saw the smoke from their camp. You will tell us how many there are and whether there are women with them. In one hour, it will be dark.

All eyes turned to the great kapok tree.

There was a deadly silence. Everyone knew what the forest was at night. And where was the West in the night? The immense West with its millions of trees.

Without a word between them, the ring of men opened. There was Vrittru, alone, facing the small white form. He drove his thumbs into his puma skin and raised his chin in defiance. Gringo watched. He saw all of this as if from above. Yet his heart was beating. And all eyes were fixed on Her. She nodded, raised her eyes in a smile. For a fleeting moment, their eyes met. Then Gringo's heart swelled with fierce joy. He pulled his bark covering tight around his waist, planted his eyes in Vrittru's — who blinked — and walked away as the tribe dispersed.

He had just time to catch sight of Rani, one finger on the tip of her nose as in her moments of great emotion. And then she disappeared behind the curtain of trees.

VIII

THE WHITE RAY

Night was falling already.

Gringo had a choice: run through the night and perhaps get lost — or wait for the first hours before dawn and slip out, only to arrive too late as well, when the camp would already be awake.

In such moments, it was Gringo's feet that knew, and his feet felt like running. But running... one couldn't see three meters ahead.

A last ray of light pierced the forest before him, all rosy. He stopped, fixed himself before that ray as if his whole body had to fill with this ray from the West. He closed his eyes. His nostrils flared. He drank in the West: "Oh! stay-stay, hold me by your pink thread" — he had to trace an invisible path, not move, above all not move from this garland of fire he was casting from his heart through the night.

Slowly, he set out, eyes closed, hands extended. The pipa-pipa¹ with their small silver hammers rang the immense crystal of the night, flooding the darkness, enveloping Gringo in a million tinkling notes — then the insects, the crickets, the great buzzing beetles, the high, mounting stridulation. Gringo wasn't listening; he walked with slow steps, eyes still closed, listening elsewhere, deeper, still deeper, to the point of heartbreak — as if this rock of night would split and let through a sliver of light. His hands grazed smooth bark, his steps stumbled, faltered and set off again; wild branches lashed his face, the epiphytes passed clammy fingers across his forehead; he moved forward as through a curtain, one step, another step, through a sliding, burning tide — and then suddenly fell to one knee, rose again, set off again, clinging blindly to that burning point deep within, which was him, purely him, so small and so intense in this immensity of night. He walked as if to meet himself, out there, at the end... the end of what? A million sorrows and whistling nights and ages heaped like layers of black humus at the edge of vanished rivers; he followed the deep bed carved by lives and lives in vain, marches and more marches, for nothing, through forests alike — rustling, inexorable; he went on endlessly toward a small point out there, a single small something that would be warm and sweet and full, a single clearing from all these marches, a single sure point — oh! something at last, something... He sank suddenly to his waist in a muddy swamp — Ma!

¹ Pipa-pipa: frogs.

He cried out.

Then it seemed to him that a white softness enveloped him.

He pulled himself free, skirted the swamp, and that thread of West seemed to be drifting: he had to turn, to turn — he was going to lose the thread. Or was it the thread pulling him?

Gringo leaned to the left. He was no longer listening to his feet or his hands or his eyes; he was listening deep inside to this single heartbeat, this burning of being — as if he absolutely had to sink in there, as if this were the only place in the world, the only path. He descended into this crevasse of night, clutching in his hands an invisible pink thread while his steps strode over obstacles, climbed, descended, knocked against things and advanced again. He thought he was going to fall — and then it was over, he would not be able to move again, this was the night of nights — Ma!

He cried out. A tiny cry that had no sound. A cry from the limit when everything is about to be dismissed with a shrug.

He stopped.

He stood there, eyes closed, hands outstretched towards nothing. Never-never would he make it through this night.

"Go!"

Then, with a cry, Gringo seized hold of himself; he seized this whole creaking, whistling, thick night as one seizes a python by the neck, and flung himself headlong into the clammy nothing — and what did it matter! He sank body and soul into a soft, stridulating tide — there was no more Gringo. There was a sudden fissure that let through a white ray — Ma!

A third time, he cried out.

And Gringo entered the white ray. 

A motionless flame. White.

Like a gateway of fire between two pillars of night. He was that white flame.

It was so perfectly still and gentle: his whole body drank in luminous softness, stretched, dilated, opened through a million pores and small doorways of light — and through each doorway, through a million doorways like a foam of light, it spread, extended, departed in a white effervescence... motionless. Motionless as centuries and centuries can be — tranquil and gentle when all the songs have been sung and all the cries lost. A million small white windows looking through light spaces, blinking here and there and everywhere, as if the world were only this white softness touching itself everywhere, finding itself everywhere. Gringo advanced in a living, fraternal light, and nothing was jarring anymore, nothing wounded, nothing was uncertain. He went through a great night of snow, carried by a million pipa-pipa, enveloped in the soft folds of a glittering train that bore away the stars and the foam of continents and all the footsteps of creatures, with each small trembling leaf and each cry in the night.

And there was no more night anywhere.

There was no more night anywhere — no more distances, no more strangeness. The world was home. Gringo was home forever, seeing through all the doors of his body; he moved lightly among eternal kindred souls, and it was like a million joys in a single heart — of cricket, frog, or star. He stopped dead.

A smell of smoke filled his lungs.

Then he climbed into a leafy tree, sat astride a branch, and waited for dawn. And in a flash he understood: that white light was the non-death.

IX

HUAGRAH

HE slid down the tree without a sound.

The forest was slumbering before dawn. A pale lattice was cut into the high vault, projecting black shadows in the thicker night below. One sensed the dense humus like a second night within the night. Gringo was motionless: he felt the great night. It entered him in small damp tongues like a brown tide swollen with smooth algae and centipedes. And suddenly he made out a lighter patch: a clearing.

Slowly, he began to move. His heart beat. Fear — he was no longer afraid, but these sleeping men were about to be stabbed without warning... Gringo could not understand. The animals, the night, the water, even the stones — he understood them so well. But this creature, which took more than its hunger... which also played the flute so beautifully — why did he hear Quiño's flute in this pale dawn?

He slipped into the undergrowth. Twenty meters ahead, a machete gleamed, abandoned. Gringo slid it into his belt: he was in the clearing. One could see nothing. This silence seemed unbearable to him. His eyes searched for a tree to hide in. He turned sharply: two phosphorescent, glaucous eyes looked at him. It was Huagrah, the great cat. Gringo became motionless as a stone — not a tremor, not a ripple, not even a breath. He became... nothing. His eyes fixed Huagrah: he was Huagrah, perfectly still, and Huagrah was him, perfectly still. Nothing moved. Not a muscle twitched. Gringo felt himself enveloped in white, slightly bluish light that formed a kind of screen. It was impenetrable. And he knew instantly: if the slightest trembling passed through him, Huagrah would release those steel muscles and it would be over in a second. And that light was very gentle, like a haze, and so perfectly motionless. He felt the small round ears of the great cat twitching — he felt them as if they were his own ears; he saw nothing but those glaucous eyes. And that pale haze around him, so sure, so tranquil, as if he stood behind centuries and centuries of peace, watching. Huagrah turned away his eyes and vanished without a sound.

Gringo felt a cold sweat on his forehead.

He released his muscles; he ached throughout his legs as if coming out of a stone corpse. He took a step toward the tree. A baby began to wail in the silence.

Then cries, a tumult, hoarse sounds.

There were perhaps a dozen of them. A woman began to howl: a long, tearing cry. 

Huagrah was leaving with his prey.

Gringo slipped away like a thief.

X

THE ENCHANTED SPRING

THEN, in that forest, strange things began to occur.

Gringo was making his way back to the camp, but there was no joy in his body, no communion with the trees — he nearly stepped on a serpent. He was a man, simply, walled in by his man's skin, with a bar across his forehead and painful thoughts: one thought, and it was the instant wall — nothing communicated anymore. Man was the one who no longer communicated. Each went with his shell around him, painted with roucou or candid blue, like the eggs of the hummingbird or the pamba — except for Ma: she was the One who had no shell.

This thought brought a smile to his lips. He emerged onto the swamp where he had nearly sunk. A marvel of a swamp, like a jewel of emerald set with tall tree ferns. They looked like dancers ranged there, motionless, with their crests on their foreheads, ready to fly off — as if waiting for a sign.

Gringo drew near gently. There was a little waterfall, very small, surmounted by two enormous bacaba trunks that rose up there with their cargo of palms and birds. Two black trunks like a gateway through which this small spring flowed. He leaned over, opened the palms of his hands like a cup, and drank at length. He heard the machete slip from his belt and roll across the rock with a clear ring. The sound resonated and resonated in his head.

That was all.

There was no more Gringo. There was someone standing before an immense gateway of white light. It was him — there was not the shadow of a doubt — but him differently, as if he were lighter. He stretched his arms forward to cross the porch. His fingers touched the flame. Then he felt himself lifted, invaded by light as by a myriad of small light bubbles beginning to bloom in his hands, his legs, his arms. And he passed through the gateway of flame.

It was a long corridor paved with gentle light. Gringo walked up the corridor — it was very long. And immense. A gigantic corridor where he was like a tiny, tiny white form going away forever. Days or years, hands stretched before him in a reverie of gentle light. The tiles were cool under his bare feet — he barely touched them. He went in a great white silence as if the corridor were made of silence — as through gentle, memoryless ages flowing smooth and cool over the tiles, erased of all marks. He climbed back up the course of time, but it was only time flowing, toward no goal and for no cause, each second like a light flake gliding on itself and making another flake that made a soft snowfall on the slopes of an eternal hill. He plunged into a radiant silence, like snow into snow and light into a dawn haze.

Abruptly, his hands touched something cold. It was a wall.

A great square slab that seemed to fill with embers as he touched it. It was very hot suddenly — his body filled with a tingling of little flames.

He pushed open the door of embers.

His body became heavier all at once. 

He had the impression of tilting forward. 

A cool breath ran across his temples.

His feet rested on a papyrus mat, beside a bed of carved stone. 

He was in another life and carried on as usual.

XI

THE QUEEN OF THE REEDS

GRINGO rose. A ray of sunlight struck the corner of the window and the stone bench with the writing-table beneath its ledge. A papyrus scroll gleamed. The tiles were cold beneath his feet; he let his hands wander in the sunlight. A flight of white pigeons glided on the wing and, in a burst of light, swooped down over the Nile.

He took a grape from a bowl, pushed open the ebony door, and descended the stone stairway to the river. The gongs of the temple could be heard in the distance.

And out there, the bare, rosy crests of the Libyan ranges like a caravan marching toward no source.

Gringo pulled his tunic close and plunged into the river. For a moment he floated, eyes to the sky and head among the sharp reeds. He was twenty-six years old today. It was thousands of years ago and thousands of years like today. It was almost heartbreaking all at once — this little figure in a white tunic drifting beneath a blazing sky; it was any day in the beating of the gongs that would beat tomorrow, beat always, while the Nile lapped and will lap for no time at last, pure and still. Gringo shook his feet vigorously because of the creatures, all the same, and climbed back up the burning steps. He hated those gongs.

— Psst!

A small round face appeared behind the reeds, eyes slitted against the sun, a brown lock on the forehead.

Gringo beckoned her closer. She shook her head.

He took a step into the reeds, his ankles sinking into the soft sponge of roots. She hid in the reeds. Her little golden face could be seen as if through a lattice of sunlight. He took another step.

— If they saw me, she murmured, they would kill me. And suddenly she was there, slender and faintly flushed like a Nubian gazelle, with her long eyes of dark gold filling her face.

— How beautiful you are, Rani! Are you the queen of the reeds?

— Tch! Tch! she said. You don't know what you're saying. They met at the high priest's — they are plotting against the Queen. They hate you, she added. And her faint voice was tight with anguish.

Gringo stood a moment, eyes straight ahead, looking out over the green undulation. One by one the pigeons scattered along the bank like dead papyrus leaves.

— Warn her.

She turned away, parted the reeds with one hand. Her long skirt, drawn tight beneath her breast, was sprinkled with small gold flames.

— Wait, wait!

— Tonight, at Quino's.

And she vanished in a rustling of stems and disheveled umbels.

XII

ONE DAY, WHEN THE EARTH WILL SUFFOCATE...

HE gathered a handful of jasmine for Her, put on a white tunic and a shawl he let hang around his neck, and was about to go out when he changed his mind, took the papyrus scroll from the writing-table, and opened the carved chest beneath the window: his treasure. THE Treasure. Dozens of straw-colored scrolls — they smelled pleasantly of cedar oil. He closed the chest and went out through the small door behind the curtain.

Then the immense corridor, low, squat, with its apertures pierced by sunlight through which a bunch of palm fronds burst forth. He was walking towards Her and already a light came from his eyes, a light breath caressed his bare torso — he was almost dancing; this moment was the only one that existed amid the dark beating of the gongs and the cry of the parakeets, in a labyrinth of small similar gestures and poignant nothings that made one day, two days, thousands of days coming and going like a cry never cried.

And when would that cry come, the one that would bring the walls tumbling down?

And we would be in it forever in the true Fullness, in every second.

He clutched his handful of jasmine; he went toward Her as if to a spring. As if to hope.

The guards pushed open the enormous door.

He was in the throne room.

She was very small, far away, and white in her long gown, seated on that straight throne carved from a single block of black diorite. And everything was so immense, so bare, beneath the great blue falcon with its outstretched wings.

She was slightly bent over; a white headband, set with an amethyst, was around her forehead.

 Gringo remained motionless for a moment — everything here was eternal; one entered here as if into the rosy sands of Abu Simbel caressed by the gentle scent of the Nile. And everything sank into a total acquiescence, like a well of tenderness beneath the world's weary eyelids.

She opened her eyes. Gringo ran toward Her like a deer.

— Happy day, little one! Happy day!

She took Gringo's hands; he sank into those eyes as if as if there were something at the end, there, deep inside her heart, centuries of tears kept behind a door — oh! open that door and depart forever in a wondrous debacle, and all would be said, and it would be clear daylight upon the world.

He pulled himself together.

— Ma, you know, they...

— Hush! I know.

She gestured toward the curtain. So they were there as well... Gringo's heart clenched. She was so alone in that immense hall. She was so small in the middle of these cold centuries. The jasmines scattered over her knees. She smiled with mischief:

— Well then, still unhappy, little one? You want to leave?

— Oh! Ma... when I'm here it's good, but...

— Leave for where, child? The four corners of the world are the same — the world is in every corner! In a thousand years you'll be looking at a little lizard and scratching your head...

A small green gecko raced down the steps at full speed, throwing its legs out on either side as if it were about to flatten itself on its belly.

— Ma, tell me! Tell me one irrefutable thing! Gringo struck the steps with his bare hand.

— But you little canary, one doesn't say irrefutable things. The only irrefutable thing is to change the world!

And She laughed, pointing to the curtain behind.

— Poor fellow, what does he think of it?... He only wants to change queens.

She laughed, and her small laugh was so delightful, like a clear waterfall amid these frozen centuries. One might have said She was fifteen.

— Wait, let's be serious...

She drew from the folds of her gown a small packet carefully wrapped in silk cloth, and opened it. A blue shimmer. And She placed a garland of lapis-lazuli around Gringo's neck.

— You see this...

She placed her finger on each stone, pressing hard against Gringo's chest.

— Each stone on the path, each stone for a life... 

And her fingers ran along the garland.

— But at the end of all the stones, there is the ring that links them all. Each stone for a question, each stone for an answer. But at the end... there is something else. Something else.

— Tell me!

— But one doesn't tell the something else, little one: one does it.

— How?

— And how does the little gecko run on its legs?

— I've run long enough in a man's skin, Ma.

— You want to become a god? A swallow?

Gringo paused to consider the swallow; that wasn't bad, a swallow...

— But a swallow forever and ever?

— Ah! there it is, little one... Something that will be everything: a swallow, a little lizard, a round pebble — a garland of men, a garland of what else?

— No more garland! Every second to be full! 

She smiled with mischief:

— They say one must go to heaven for that, or to the land of the dead.

— That isn't true — you know it well, you've told me a thousand times, I have a thousand papyrus scrolls in my chest! You've told me so many secrets, Ma — I am your scribe. But the wisdom is old, I am twenty-six and I am thirsty.

Ma's face became grave. She closed her eyes. Her body seemed to fill with light like an alabaster vase in the flame.

— Listen, little one... They call me old... and I have waited so long for them to want something other than this. I have millennia and I wait. I have treasures of adventure. But who is thirsty, little one, except for small marvels and happy offspring? Who believes in more than man?

— I believe.

— What will you do, all alone as a different species among the old tribes?

A silence fell. One heard the muffled sound of the gongs. Gringo felt suddenly heavy, as if carrying the weight of the world with its gongs, its dead, its spice markets in a chattering swarm.

— What is the secret of change? he murmured. Where is the Passage?

— One day, when the earth will suffocate from its human science and its barbarous myriads... 

Then She lifted her great diamond eyes to Gringo.

— You will be there, I will call you. Now go — they are waiting for us.

Gringo rested his forehead on Her knees. It seemed to him he was dissolving in a white blaze.

XIII

THE LAW

Gringo didn't believe any of those threats; it all seemed like a made-up story. He had lived so long near Her, as if in a cocoon of light, and that was the only true story. How could anyone not love Beauty? Their gods were grand, perhaps, compassionate like Isis and warm like Amun, but what about that gentleness of heart, like a lotus opening and drinking in an invisible sun? And sometimes, it seemed to him that all the gods were intertwined with all evils, even if it was to heal them.

He passed before the enormous pylon that stood out in the night with its banners, took one alley, another, through a labyrinth of aromatics and ripe lemons, skirted the river, climbed the steep stairway: he was on Quino's small terrace, above the Nile.

Quino had not moved.

The river gleamed like a reptile.

— What is it, Quino?

He was crouched on the ground, his flute on his knees, his headband tight on his forehead. Gringo leaned toward him, caressed his hair:

— You say nothing, you don't play?

Quino shook his head, took his flute between his hands.

— I don't know, brother... I have a weight on my heart. It feels as though the night will never end.

He gave a faint smile, tossed out two small sharp notes that crossed the night like a bird struck in flight.

— You see, she won't come.

And all at once Gringo felt it — yes, that intense stillness descending upon him. He knew... He took Quino's hands, looked at him for a long moment. A cluster of palm fronds stood out behind him, with a cascade of small silver rays. A dog was heard howling. An intense second with a great transparent gaze; a second that had resonated many times, in many lives, and suddenly one is surrounded by distances: a tiny person within a great gaze. He rose slowly, his white tunic glowing. He brought his hand to his neck: "Each stone for a life..." And everything was quiet, as behind a curtain closing on sorrows and noises. There was just a little Gringo on the other side, like an image.

That small image was turned inside out. There was the sound of bare feet on the tiles, a rustling of a skirt, small gold flames. Then heavy steps, the clashing of weapons.

— Run.

She was very straight against an immense pale sky. Their gazes melted into an eternal softness. Then the men sprang onto the terrace. Gringo composed himself: "The chest, the Treasure!" 

For a second his head turned.

— Run! she cried.

She threw herself on them; he ran toward the balustrade.

— Bitch! he heard them yell, then a dull sound. 

He leaped into the river, swam, ran through the reeds: "The treasure — the treasure must be saved..." He was tearing his feet, advancing through a lapping tide, stumbling and going on — Ma!...

He pushed open the ebony door: the torches were lit. They were there. The arrogant Vrittru, wearing his high-priest's cap, thumbs thrust into his belt.

— Well, my pretty seditious scribe...

Gringo threw himself on the chest. They had opened everything — scrolls were strewn across the floor.

— No, no!

And then that loud, resounding awful laugh. Gringo turned to face him:

— You cannot! You simply cannot — don't you understand?

He felt dizzy; he babbled as through a nightmare night. He grabbed Vrittru's arm:

— Understand, do understand, you madman! Oh! Vrittru, kill me if you wish — but this is the gold of the world, this is hope — hope, do you understand?

— Hope for what?

— The Secret... The Thing... The Passage... You understand — the Passage. And then it was so futile, there among these hungry beasts.

— Your passage goes to the bottom of the Nile — you with it, as fodder for Sobek-Rê¹...

Gringo let his arm fall. It was vain. It was absurd. He looked at the white scrolls, he looked at this light and this love brought to nothing, and the night that rose like a barbarous clamor. He heard in the distance the voice of a muscular dwarf:

— You want to overturn the earth and the law of the gods, do you? But the Law is the Law, and no man is greater than the sky — are you capable of flying now?

Ma's face flashed before him: "Do you want to?" 

And he knew he could.

¹ Sobek-Rê: the crocodile god.

Gringo looked around him; but he had no desire to take flight, even if wings were given to him. He looked at these greedy men, and his heart was full of sadness — as if the long passage had not finished traversing cruel nights and iron laws, and many men armed with laws to protect their smallness. And what is the use of wings, for a man all alone?

— You see, you are powerless.

He spoke, and picked up a white scroll which he crumpled in his hands. Gringo looked at that light of love, that hope in the fist of a man who wanted no hope, who wanted no love, who only wanted the law and the law.

He was beyond words. He was in the silence of love that waits — oh! that has waited so long for a man's heart to melt and consent to Beauty and consent to the Marvel.

— Take him away.

Gringo opened his hands and smiled at the night. 

An iron blade rang out on the tiles.

The sound echoed and re-echoed in his head.

That was all.

He smiled at the night.

XIV

AND THE LITTLE IGUANA TROTTED ON...

HE smiled at the light.

The song of the forest surrounded Gringo with love. The tall ferns had just settled on their tips and were waiting, slightly bowed, to resume their dance. Gringo ran his fingers through the waterfall, still holding a silver thread, and then... And then the crickets carried the dreams away in a high, strident wave, like another memory of all memories, sweet and deep in the shimmering folds of time. A small green wader set one delicate foot on the rock, hesitated, dipped its beak into the waterfall and flew off at once with a fluting cry — towards what country? For the world is a country of a thousand countries, rosy and blue, singing and grave as the heart of the night, or sudden and light as a fleeting smile.

Gringo smiled and it became the prettiest of all countries in the world.

For a moment he hesitated, brought his hand to his neck as if searching for something, looked around him, searched again, for man seeks without knowing it - for a great, eternal country, as if his land had not quite found its eyes or from what dream it emerges or its garland that binds everything together — and we go here and there, groping through this story, clothed in rags and sorrows, in white, in red, in black, with a few scraps of smile and great hollow eyes.

His eyes fell on the machete. 

A frown creased his forehead.

He did not want to see this again; he only wanted to relive that lovely memory: that which was like a soft, causeless love, enveloping everything in its pearly folds — night, day, evil, sorrows and small joys, alike; that which was like an unforgettable caress from the depths of time — oh! to remember only that...

But this machete was not his own.

Then he knew and looked at the sun, at his feet bloodied from the long run. He recalled the pain. He was again a little child of man and pulled his bark-cloth tight around his waist.

Vrittru was waiting for him in the clearing with the whole tribe, silent.

It was Her he saw first — peaceful and white in a hollow of the violet-wood, counting her seeds as if nothing had happened. It was warm and light in his heart like a small gazelle's leap. She smiled.

Vrittru stepped forward, thumbs in his belt.

— You slept, did you? And you want us to believe... 

Gringo looked at Vrittru for a moment: vague shadows touching a sunlit shore. He smiled.

— Well, speak!

Without a word, Gringo drew the machete from his belt and in one stroke, planted it between Vrittru's feet. Vrittru went pale. There was an amused murmur.

— How many are there? he said in a furious voice. 

Gringo hesitated: if he said too few, he would have them killed; if he said too many...

— There are perhaps fifty. I didn't see clearly. There are women and children.

— We will kill them.

— No, you will not kill them, said a small clear voice calmly. 

Everyone turned toward Her.

— But...

— I have spoken.

A silence fell.

Vrittru turned toward the tribe:

— If we don't kill them, it is we who will starve. There will be no more game. They are coming onto our territory — they will steal our women. This land is ours, it has been for tribe after tribe. Will we let ourselves be invaded like cowards?

There was a long murmur through the tribe. Vrittru puffed himself up like a guinea fowl. Ma did not move. She was so still and so frail in the midst of that pack — and yet so imperious in her silence.

Gringo went to stand beside Her.

— For tribe after tribe, it is the Law, Vrittru went on. We are killed, or we kill. If we do not follow the Law, the spirits of our fathers will pursue us and our children will be struck down. 

Brujos, the slippery slug, came to stand next to Vrittru. He was the healer.

— If we are struck by evil, said he, how shall I cure you? For tribe after tribe, the spirit of evil is vanquished by the wise Law, and if we betray the Law, who will protect us?

Now the tribe was shaken. Gringo listened from afar to a clamor rising from the depths of time — an old, inexorable clamor like fear and hunger. And all of this was unreal: there was no evil, there was no enemy, there was no missing game, no one had been struck down! And yet everyone was struck down.

He turned toward Brujos, toward Vrittru: they were the inventors of evil and the cure for evil. Ma held his wrist:

— Be quiet, little one.

Everyone was looking at Ma.

— Tonight, she said, I will go and blow out the smoke from their camp — and if tomorrow Brujos still sees a fire, it will mean he has taken too much niopa.¹

And in one stroke the commotion subsided. Everyone looked at each other, then laughter broke out everywhere — there was no more enemy, no more war, no more law, no more spirits, no more tribe of tribes. It had all flown away, like a cloud of bats in the light. There was a morning like any other, and the little iguana trotting off to lay its egg in the igapó.

Gringo caught sight of Rani, one finger on the tip of her nose. She had put on a bark skirt drawn tight beneath her round breasts, and a line of red roucou like a small flame on her forehead.

¹ Niopa: a hallucinogenic powder.

XV

LITTLE-QUEEN

THIS time, his feet had decided on the mangrove.

Rani hopped behind him like an agouti after wild nuts, stopped, raised her nose in the air, sniffed at an herb and plunged into the undergrowth with a delighted laugh.

— Boo!...

— What is it, little queen?

— Look at this one...

She was crouching before a large dark-green basilisk, crest arched, one paw raised and a furious eye spinning like a top:

— And I tell you, for tribe after tribe, that is no way for a basilisk to behave and you will be struck down by the big blue chameleon... which does not exist.

And she burst into a cascade of laughter.

— Yes, he's yellow now.

Gringo shrugged and continued on his way with dignity. Not for long.

— Gringo, hey! Gringo... does the spirit of the tribes float in the trees? Or in what? What is a "spirit"?

Gringo scratched his head.

— It's... Curupira, they say.

— Ah! Curupira, then¹...

She put her finger on her nose, nodded.

— And what's that?

She picked up a nut from the ground.

— It's a chawari nut.

— And Chawari, what is that?

— It's a nut.

— So it's a nut, and chawari is the spirit of the nut — what's the point of all that chawari?

— Listen, little queen...

— No! I tell you, a nut is a nut — why do you want to add a tail to it? Has anyone ever seen a nut with a tail? Do you see Vrittru... with an iguana's tail?

She laughed and laughed.

Gringo was perplexed.

— All right, don't get cross — what I mean is, it saves complications. Now I know: every time I don't know, it's Curupira. There.

She stopped a moment, pulled at her lock of hair.

¹ Curupira: another name for the collective Unconscious...

— And if I eat too many nuts, it's Curupira that gives me a stomach-ache.

She said this and went back to hopping along, adding under her breath: "Does one really need to add Curupiras to everything."

For she was very stubborn.

They arrived at the waterfall instead of the mangrove. How? Gringo never knew — unless his feet had changed their mind along the way.

— How love-ly! exclaimed Rani. And she clasped her breasts between her hands.

A tumble of black diorite opened on the flanks of the serra, washed by foam, bubbling with light, in a cascading uproar pierced by birdsong — then plunging suddenly like a long smooth sheet into the immense crackling swell of greens, all the way to the savanna out there, fringed with silver, and the sea.

Gringo sat down, breathless; it seemed to him he was plunging at last into his country, without bounds.

Rani shook her head, put her finger on the tip of her nose, as if it were all too — too... troubling, perhaps. She looked at Gringo, then at the savanna again, then at Gringo again; one might have thought she was following an invisible trail between that heart and that flight of light. And for the first time her heart clenched as if before a danger greater than Vrittru.

— Wait, she said, put your feet in the torrent. It was freezing, burning.

And she began to wash his wounds.

— Are you hungry? Do you want a nut... of chawari? Gringo shook his head. He listened to the endless rolling, pierced by a humming-bird's cry like a long tender whistle for no ear — or for the infinite, perhaps, blazing with light, at the end of all paths.

— Little queen, he said at last, what comes after man?

— After man? She was dumbfounded. Gringo continued gently:

— After the forest, there is the sea; after the sea, there are the clouds — after man, what is there?

She stayed for a long time contemplating, one hand on her cheek, and it made a burning in her heart.

— After Gringo, I want Gringo still.

— Always with two legs, always with hunger? And then baby Gringos, and then Gringos of Gringos in the forest of forests... forever?

She looked at him for a long time, and her eyes lost themselves at the end of all those little Gringos.

— With two legs, with three legs, I go with Gringo. After the clouds, the rain still loves the forest.

He stroked her tousled hair.

— ...Where you go, I go — you are my great forest.

— Listen, little queen... I don't know. I'm fifteen and I have many uncounted years — before Gringo or always Gringo — and it's...

He remained suspended, as if over an incomprehensible chasm opening in the middle of that tangle of green.

— There is after the forest, there is after Gringo — I don't know. After, do you understand? She nodded, shook herself:

— After, there is my heart still beating.

And Gringo remained with this kind of chasm inside him, making a white flame — a hole of fire never filled.

— Do you know the door of fire?... A white fire. She gave a start.

— The door?... That night you ran — I saw a great white fire. I ran with you and we entered the white fire. I forgot everything.

She stayed there, nose in the air, musing, as if looking at... what?

— Perhaps that's the door of after? she murmured.

Then she gave a sudden cry, like a wounded bird:

— With you, always-always! Through any door!

Then Gringo took her hand. It was small and brown and icy-cold. He held that little hand as one warms a bird. A few large drops of rain fell on their hands.

Then he said slowly, as one sings a melody in the evening to tame the dreams:

— Together we will pass the white door and go to the country of after.

And the rain began to tumble — enormous, warm, consenting — enveloping the waterfall and the forest, and two small forms pressed together like a prayer of the earth in the immense green crackling.

XVI

SUKURI

THE rain had been falling for days, weeks, and Gringo wandered with his question — when one is hungry, is it a question? Life seemed destined to be the same forever, with this path or another, and the small creatures that didn't see the days passing. Man is first the one who counts time, as if an eternal "something" were out there, farther off, at the end of... what? As if something were not there — and what is it that is not there?

The little pamba is perfectly there, coiled in the leaves; the hoopoo too, striped in brown and white. They do and it is done.

We do, and it is never done.

And what is not done, not there, never there — and nothing is done?

Gringo was perched in the tangle of the mangrove's tall roots, watching the half-submerged mangroves, the black silt pocked by rain in which a water lily's green leaf sometimes burst open. He watched the interminable rain, the silent serpent coiling at the root and moving as if not moving, pointing its small tongue. He was lost there — neither serpent nor root, not even that drop of light shining on the lily's leaf. He could have hunted, fished, and hunted again, and filled the days with a thousand reassuring gestures — and then... and then what?

A malaise came over him. He turned.

Sukuri, the anaconda, was gliding toward him, mottled in gold and black.

One could not run in those tangled roots, and Sukuri swam even better than it glided. It glided slowly like a living wave.

Gringo straightened. He was naked and copper-colored; his streaming body was like a flame in that enormous teeming. He looked at Sukuri with all that flame gathered in his eyes.

"Go away," he said in a clear, neutral voice. 

Sukuri stopped. It looked at Gringo. 

Everything was motionless, without a tremor.

It was as thick as a mangrove trunk.

"Go away," Gringo repeated, emphasising each word. And all at once he sensed, felt that Sukuri was gathering its long coils — Ma! cried Gringo.

There was a flash of white light. Gringo staggered, nearly fell backward into the swamp. Sukuri turned its flat head and went off through the roots without a sound, like a movement of death. 

Gringo turned: there She was, all white and motionless on the mangrove bank. Then he plunged in, swam toward Her:

— Ma!

And he threw himself at Her feet.

— On your feet, little one. A man stands upright.

She stroked his hair; he looked at her as one plunges into a clear spring, as one loses oneself in the shimmer of the waters at the edge of the savanna. And everything stood still. It was timeless time — where there was both a fullness and a void together.

— Listen, little one...

She smiled, and one was so peaceful in that smile, so sure — as if all the centuries had already been lived.

— I am leaving soon...

— No, no — not yet!

— They are weary of me; they go around in their small circles with their recurring stories. They are already grumbling.

— What will I do without you?

— When you no longer have me, you will have to find me where I always am.

— Oh! Ma, the path drops away under my feet. I don't know the path.

— Your cry makes the path — it is the path itself! As thirst leads to the stream.

— But why must you leave? Can't you stop them all, like Sukuri, in a flash?

— I can, she said...

And there was something like the hint of a sadness in her smile:

— But who will remain standing among the little men? I am not the queen of a tribe of cowards.

— But why don't they love you? Why?

— Whatever changes the law is a misfortune for man. They don't want to change their law or only to change it and adopt another one. They want to hunt, fish, sleep... or dream a little, play the flute like Quino.

— Ma, Sukuri follows its law — what is man's law?

— It is to undo the law, little one. He is the one who can change the law: Sukuri cannot.

— How will I undo these days and days with their hunger and their wake of sleep?

— The question is the answer itself, like the drop of water that splits the rock.

— Ma, can you not split my rock?

— I can, she said...

And She remained a moment looking into the distance, as if She traversed those days and days filled with small gestures and vain desires.

— But to split the rock is the very power of becoming the other thing.

— How far will one have to go?

— To the end of everything, when all the paths are worn out. Listen, little one... pass once more through the white door and I will deliver you from the burden of vain hopes — what one hopes for is still the thickness of the unsplit rock. When the rock is split, that is there. She turned slightly.

A kingfisher darted through the air with a rattling sound.

Vrittru was there, arms crossed.

— And don't forget: the enemy is the one who helps you walk the path; I placed him there to shake your sleep — just as Sukuri was placed for your cry. Now go — they are waiting for us.

And She went towards the man.

— O Queen, he said...

He raised his chin, spread his legs a little — they were somewhat knock-kneed. He would have liked to be king — but king of what?

— You promised us a happy land and we followed you here, but where is your abundance? Our children are struck by fever — mine is going to die. Show me your power.

He pushed his thumbs into his belt. She looked so frail.

— Come then, she said simply.

And they disappeared behind the tall mangrove roots.

XVII

WHAT FOR?

IF Vrittru's son died, She would leave. 

She was going to leave...

He watched the trees, a bois-tombé (dead-wood) whose tiny shoots once again reached for the sky; the endless procession of fire-ants with their bounty of leaves. Fall, rot, devour, climb again. The law of life. And from where to change the law, from which end? She was going to die and all this forest was nothing but a hostile swarm. Death — what is it? The law of life, or the law of death? Change death?

She had lived through ages. She had come from the snows out there, they said — tribes after tribes, Gringo after Gringo with a few Vrittrus and the processionary caterpillars under their little leaf-hats. A thousand years like that? What good is it stopping death if this life does not change?

Change life?

— What does that mean, hey, little queen — change life? Do you know?

She was looking at him with her large almond-shaped eyes that extended to her cheeks, crouching before the fire-ant procession, chin in her fist. She nodded to the right, nodded to the left:

— You are strange, Gringo... As for me, my heart is full and life is changed.

— She is going to leave.

— Who? Ma?

She went pale beneath her golden copper skin.

— They are going to kill you.

— Ah! you see... life is no longer full.

— But I will kill him first, she whispered.

Gringo looked for a moment at that little woman with her line of red roucou on her forehead — she was perfectly beautiful.

— There are lots of little Vrittrus...

— I will kill them all.

There was such a wild flame in her eyes; Gringo looked at her as if he didn't know her.

— Then we'd be all alone on earth.

— And Quino?

— We'd be three — that's already something! Come, little queen, don't be so serious...

— You can talk! she said through clenched teeth. Who ever heard of changing life? It's the Curupira in your head that needs changing!

Gringo laughed — but he wasn't so sure.

— And you up there, what do you say about it?

Quino's head emerged from the branches, looking as if he'd just fallen from the moon, his flute in his hands, his black hair disheveled like an anteater's tail, and his trumpet nose. He slid down the trunk.

— Me, what?

— He wants to change life, said Rani — can you imagine?

— Aah! said Quino, opening his mouth like a fish... What for? Do you want some honey? There's a whole hive up there... But they sting.

Gringo shrugged and started walking again. "What for?..." And he couldn't quite understand why he wasn't content with a honeycomb and a little queen who hopped around so sweetly.

They arrived at the emerald lake.

— How lovely! exclaimed Rani.

They sat on the rock near the small spring. Quino took out his flute and played two notes like the joyful call of the hummingbird when it has drunk from the flower and flies away suddenly.

Gringo opened his hands like a cup.

The two notes echoed and re-echoed in Gringo's head. And that was all.

XVIII

THE CITADEL

HE entered through the door of flame. It was like a wind passing through him — his legs, his arms, his head.

He was swept away in a wind of light, eyes closed, as if furrowed and bathed at once by a soft, white wave that dissolved the boundaries, undid the hard weave of his body, untied the knots, the threads, the opacities, in a myriad of small cracklings of light — and carried him away, naked and light, in an immense, eternal tenderness. For a moment he wanted to hold onto this thread of himself, this heartbeat on a green bank out there, and this sunlit murmur — as if searching for a memory in the velvet folds of a shadowy lake — then he opened his hands as one releases a bird... he slipped into the gentle wind of a memoryless bank where smooth reeds bend like a wave leaving no trace. He went through the great forgotten centuries, clothed in light and as if borne by a bird's memory, toward a light country on rosy meridians; he went out there, to the ends of time, in an immense tenderness that was like the country itself — the tranquil Arctic beneath a white wingbeat.

Then he fell suddenly, as if from a great height. There were walls, a corridor. Everything was bathed in a gentle light and in a silence so deep it seemed to reverberate far off on a high crystal crest, beating out there for a long time, like a chime beneath the snow.

His fingers touched the wall. There was a square slab. It seemed to fill with a blue flame beneath his fingers, like a sapphire brazier. A cool breeze stirred and his body took on a different density. He pushed the slab aside.

It was an explosion of sunlight.

He arrived amid the harsh cry of seagulls, at the foot of a citadel battered by foam and wind. Gringo was sitting on a rock, watching.

The sea swelled like an enormous blue belly and plunged with a battering blow, spurting foam into the caves below him.

— Again! Again! cried Rani, clapping her hands.

Her long golden hair floated in the wind; she stuck out her tongue to lick the salty spray. Gringo was elsewhere, as usual.

— Hey! Gringo, you'll miss your lesson!

She was perched above him on a large rock covered by fennel.

— Do you hear?

And vrrm! — a wave gushed over Gringo, scattering in a burst of foam. He moved slightly.

— Oh! Gringo, His Excellency will fly into a rage — you'll be thrown in the dungeon.

This time Gringo laughed and, in one leap, as if borne by the air, found himself beside her:

— I'll pass through the walls.

— Fine. But it will give you a headache. So?

— So, off with it!

He pulled his tunic tight, took Rani's hand, then stopped suddenly:

— Just now, I saw a strange thing...

He looked at Rani as if trying to imagine another face over hers. She was beautiful, perfectly upright in the wind, hair loose and her eyes always slanted in laughter — or perhaps from the spray.

— You were leaning over me. It was by the edge of a lake surrounded by strange green trees, like ferns — light, like a lacework of leaves. And you were half-naked, with a black lock on your forehead. You were looking at me very intently; you seemed to be in grief, or afraid — I don't know. Quino was there too. It seemed to be a large forest. But it was mainly your eyes... You don't have black eyes and yet they were your eyes, so full of... I don't know. And then there was the feeling: we must hurry-hurry, they're going to kill her...

— Oh!

— But do what? There was something to be done. It was very intense. Something that could save her, or save us — I don't know. And then I was naked and completely motionless, as if I were asleep, or dreaming. Yet I could see everything clearly.

She put a finger on the tip of her nose — she looked grave for once.

— So they wanted to kill her... Tell me, could that not be a previous life?

— Previous? Or next?... But we looked very primitive.

— Tell me, do they always want to kill her? Have they always killed her?... Or perhaps you simply dreamed it.

— And now, am I dreaming?

They both laughed and the wind flapped their white clothes as if about to carry them off to another island, out there, beyond the seagulls' cry and the spray, in the Cyclades of Atlantis.

XIX

HIS EXCELLENCY

GRINGO ran through the great blue corridors of the Citadel, barely touching the ground — he seemed to move without effort. Everything was strangely muffled here, beneath this blue phosphorescence of the walls, as if one were sailing through an underwater sky. He reached the great door — was it a door? It was dark blue like the sea and semicircular. He clutched his white tunic tight, ran his hand through his hair, and touched that blue substance with his fingertips; it slid over itself. He was in the workroom. 

No one moved.

There were perhaps twenty of them, sitting in a circle, wearing tunics as blue as the walls, on a mossy carpet. The immense circular hall was ringed by twelve white pillars, intersected by blue panels supporting a milky dome. There was a gong in the middle, held by a chain. Every time he entered this place, Gringo began to suffocate — but still... He looked at his incongruous white tunic, smoothed his hair made sticky with sea spray, looked at the man again — a discontented, harsh wave came to dispel all the pretty sunlight surrounding him. In one stroke he entered the machinery. The "machinery," for Gringo, was all those small, cold, willful rays that bent substance and men. For they were in this land of the Atlanteans, where a handful of men had mastered the forces of Nature through occult powers — as others, later, would believe they mastered them through the powers of Science.

His Excellency nodded and resumed his discourse. Gringo slipped into the circle, beside Quino.

— Here is the origin of rhythm...

He touched the pit of his stomach, holding his breath. He was dressed in a dark violet toga and enthroned on a brocade cushion; he looked like an old condor with a piercing gaze: Vrittru aged and armed with a beard to hide his bitter wrinkles and his violent chin.

— If you master it here, you master it everywhere — in stones, in animals, in men — because it is the same rhythm in everything. It is the Rhythm that encloses the world and each thing in its precise network...

He stood up.

— You see this body — it is matter like any other, but what is matter?... These are energies assembled in a vibratory network. The network must be undone. One must act on the Rhythm that makes this network rather than another...

He spoke, drew breath... and slowly disappeared like an object disintegrating without trace, or gradually ceasing to reflect light. His hard voice could still be heard:

— Then you can dematerialize anything, anyone... You are the master of life. And you can materialize anything, by emitting the corresponding vibration...

A hissing was heard, and... a black serpent began to glide over the carpet among the silent disciples. Then the voice continued:

— The opaque matter that encloses you is simply a heavy vibration corresponding to the small spectrum of light that your stupid eyes can grasp — there is all the rest of the spectrum.

And he reappeared abruptly on his golden cushion. With a snap of his fingers, he made the serpent disappear.

— And that is how all useless serpents vanish.

Then he drew a round, transparent object from the pockets of his tunic.

— You, Quino — come here. Repeat the exercise.

Quino was green with fear. He came to sit before the Master, cleared his throat, placed his hands on his knees and drew breath. Vrittru held the object in the palm of his hand. Quino looked and looked at the object.

— You're afraid, aren’t you — you're a worm. Why do you come here? This is not a school for babies. Go on — you can go crawl about with the rest.

Without a word, Quino stood up and left the room. Gringo's hands were sweaty with anger.

— We are here to form a new humanity, Vrittru went on. We want to break free of the cycle of fear and hunger and submission to the petty, opaque rhythm that imprisons animals and beings — understood? — and the world. We want a new world, a free one.

He looked as if sinking his teeth into the world.

He put the object back in his pocket and turned to Psilla. They said she was his favorite. She was beautiful, tall, like a statue — but there was that pointed nose Gringo disliked, and those bright eyes that sought to capture one.

— You, Psilla — what does it mean to you, a free world?

She raised her head, drew a breath, and looked at the gong for a moment. Slowly the gong began to vibrate: a deep, coppery sound, rising — as if its center had been touched. Then she said in a clear, detached voice, like cutting a rice cake:

— To depend on nothing.

His Excellency nodded. Gringo felt a cold ray striking his heart. He knew it was his turn.

— And you, Mister rebel — what do you say? He felt like saying "Damn it!" but held back. No — he wasn't afraid; Gringo was never afraid. But if he were expelled, the door of the Citadel would close on Her, and he would see her no more.

— A free world?... Gringo clenched his teeth.

— To fly through the air, yes — to no longer depend on this heavy gravity, yes — but free for what, if I don't love everything and if everything doesn't love me?

There was a murmur around him.

— Show me your power... What can you do to change the fate of the teeming millions?

— And you? asked Gringo. Apart from sounding the gong and passing through walls. 

Vrittru went pale beneath his beard.

— When all have power, they will emerge from their misery.

— Or they will strike down everything they don't love.

— You are not only a rebel but an obscurantist — you disparage Science. You are not worthy of being here. One last time — show me your power.

— I can fly when my heart is joyful.

— And then?

Gringo felt an iron ring closing around his temples. He closed his eyes for a moment. Free — for what, if everything doesn't smile? Powerful — for what, if the heart isn't light? Sated with what, if the soul is hungry?... He opened his eyes, looked around him at these "disciples" walled in by walls thicker than those of the Citadel — could they penetrate these walls? The silence was like lead around him and he felt so alien, so empty...

— Come on, Vrittru said, what else? Show us your power of love. Slowly, Gringo rose.

— If my power struck you down, you would be convinced...

— And arrogant, to boot.

— Even if I could, I would do nothing — I need only to love. Psilla turned toward him like a serpent:

— Who says we don't love? Some of us will pass through the wall, and we will carry all the rest along. We are the pioneers — these men are in slavery. Do you want to be a slave with them?

— If loving is being a slave, then I prefer to be a slave with them rather than possess your brilliant powers.

— Ah! you see — you are clinging to the night.

— Enough, cut in Vrittru. Tomorrow at dawn you will go to the great platform of the Citadel and if you can fly, as you say, you will dive into the sea... or onto the rocks. Will you fly, out of love for Her?

Then Gringo understood: it was not him he wanted to strike, but Her.

Vrittru stood up, dug his thumbs into his cord-belt. A dark blue light enveloped his head like a radiation.

— I have spoken. Tomorrow you will give proof.

And with a glance, he set the gong ringing at full peal.

XX

THE SEASON OF MEN

WOULD he fly?

Life was strangely the same even with the power of flight. And what would make it different? What? One steps out of the cage, yes — and then one goes back in and everything is the same. One passes through walls, and then there are other walls. But a world without walls and without cages? Would we invent a new organ? Even animals invented organs to explore their world — and what new organ would we invent to outwit all walls and all cages? To fly was still just putting wings on the cage; Vrittru knew only the secret of an improved cage. The organ — what organ? The thing that would make it different forever.

Gringo watched the giant cherry tree in the Citadel's courtyard, laden with blossoms — a pink cascade criss-crossed by celebrating hummingbirds; he watched the large rectangular window above the cherry tree, and everything was so peaceful. It was She who had designed the courtyard, set the lawn beneath the cherry tree, and a basin where the water murmured. And Gringo looked and looked, like poor Quino at the crystal ball, straining his eyes to the bursting point. It was poignant, that cherry tree — perhaps he would never see it again. But that wasn't it: it was this beauty, this pink cascade — like the sea he loved so much, swollen with foam and countries beyond. It was OTHER. It was something one "looked at" to drink in its color and beauty. And then the gaze grows weary, one moves on and it is “other” again, and again the gaze grows weary. But what would make it not “other” — what complete organ? What million of burning gazes, like a million mad hummingbirds in the great tree of the world?

Gringo wanted to be the cherry tree — he wanted to be the sea. To flow through the slow centuries of the cherry tree and in the swell with a seagull's cry. And where was that organ?

No — he didn't fly that evening; he climbed slowly up the steps toward that window above the cherry tree: a small spiral staircase carpeted with golden moss.

She was seated in the bay window, hands clasped in her lap, her eyes closed, gazing at the cherry tree She no longer saw. Or did She see it differently?

She raised her head. She was wrapped in a small white silk cloak, and always, when one drew near Her, those snowy distances seemed to stretch out as if entering a slow, fluttering flight over scattered summits. Ma was the endless great voyage. One set out into Her through centuries as smooth as mother-of-pearl.

Gringo took her hand. It was cool, coursed by small violet veins.

— Yes, little one, I know...

— I am not afraid of dying.

— It is living that is difficult.

— Ma, I know your great white corridor. I opened the jade door onto a sunlit lake. I opened the door of embers — I know the blue door. I also know the door of snow, all alone, in my heart. When will we knock on the true door?

— But they are all true, little one.

— Yes — but one comes back out of them. Tomorrow I will come out through the blue door.

— You don't like the spectacle? she said, with that small mocking smile.

— Ma, I have learned many things — you have taught me many secrets. But where is THE Secret?

— But it grows with you, at each door.

— Is it to fly? To dematerialize, rematerialize like Vrittru — to pass through walls and drink from the great current of Energies? I can do all that, more or less... I know the trick. But THAT — which has no trick, which is simple as breathing and is always-always there, everywhere — as if there were no more need for doors or other doors out there: one is in it. One is in it forever. It flows like the cherry tree and like the sea. Ma, the cherry tree is greater than Vrittru, the sea also — even the blade of grass is satisfied in its skin of grass and lighter than Vrittru. But this skin of man? I don't know the secret of this skin. It is a prison, with wings from time to time. Has Vrittru found the true key? — But he too will pass again through the blue door, and as long as one comes back out, one is not in it!

— They will poison the earth with their "tricks," she said simply.

— Then what?

She remained pensive for a moment, as if She looked far, far ahead — over the cherry tree and other cherry trees.

— They will invent still more tricks.

— Then where is the door — which door?

— You cannot pass through the door alone, little one — what good would it do?

— Does everyone have to pass through it?... Then it is far, far away... Does Vrittru even want to pass through the true door?

— Little one, you are asking for secrets that are not of your time.

— I will die tomorrow.

— Little bird, you know very well one doesn't die. And if you wish, you can fly tomorrow. 

Gringo went blank for a second.

— Do you want to? she asked with a smile.

— They are going to make a cruel and merciless world with their powers.

— Yes.

— I don't want power: I want to love. I want it to flow!

— Little one...

She took his hands, and everything was very soft and as if forever — without out-there, without here, without I-want and I-don't-want.

— Love alone is not enough. Power alone is not enough. The sword must be joined to love.

— Kill Vrittru?

— He will spring up elsewhere — men love their "tricks."

— Then what?

— Listen, little one — this is all I can tell you…

The seagulls' cry could be heard above the cherry tree.

— When we arrive at the black door... when there are no more other doors and all the tricks have failed — then the little men, by millions and millions, will come to the hour of choice.

— What choice?

— The intensity of the need will bring forth the other man — like the cherry blossom in season. There is a season for men. There is an intensity of beings... or not: the dead leaves fall. The tree is shaken.

She leaned slightly toward him, lightly touching his hair.

— Tomorrow, you will fly if you wish.

Then She added with that small mischievous look:

— Unless we all fly off with the seagulls! 

And She laughed like an amused little girl.

XXI

WITH THE CRY OF THE SEAGULLS

AT the appointed hour, Gringo was ready.

He crossed the courtyard, looked once more at the great cherry tree and the window above. For a moment he stood with his eyes closed. Frogs croaked in the basin. He knew this hour well — it was old within him, as if dawn after dawn like this one had found him again; he could almost touch all those forms of himself, small and dressed in white, moving with eyes closed: a long procession of the dead in a morning like this one, each with a flame in the hollow of his hands — a flame, that is all that remains. A great gaze at nothing, filling with softness.

Gringo climbed the steps of the Citadel; the stone was cold beneath his feet, a wind from above caressed his shoulders. He shivered. He didn't ask himself whether he would fly or not; the world had fallen from him like a cloak, like a worn and not-quite-certain story; he held this flame in the hollow of his hands and it was the only story, the only heartbeat of all these vain heartbeats — so soft, like a bird, warm and full. A million gestures for this single gesture, a thousand days for this white minute — this single gaze at nothing, and yet the gaze of all gazes, the country sought through a thousand windows. Gringo held this small flame close to his heart — this single beating, sure thing, so sure, like the consent of all those sorrows, the smile that had taken thousands of steps to meet itself again at the end of the steps — and everything was simple and clear. Then he closed his eyes, let the flame rise, let the great tranquil country rise like a swell of gentleness embellished with bubbles and murmurs on a small bare shore.

The sea rippled in the distance.

He emerged onto the terrace with the cry of the seagulls.

Rani was there, hair loose in the wind, perfectly upright against the sky and the sea, like a prow ready to cleave space. Their eyes crossed for a moment. It was fire.

And then the dark circle: Vrittru in front, his violet toga flapping in the wind, arms crossed over his belly; the disciples mute with fear in their bellies; Psilla leaning forward as if to pluck some perverse delight from the condemned man's eyes.

He looked at the sea — oh, so beautiful, like a million silver birds.

He took three steps toward the edge; the wind smelled of fennel.

She took three steps.

And then everything happened very quickly: he saw the flash of a dagger; she threw herself upon Vrittru and pierced his heart. He slumped, the disciples cried out, Psilla leaped like a tigress.

There was a flash of white light.

Then he felt that small, warm hand taking his own, as an enormous crash shook the Citadel and split the rock behind them.

The earth groaned like a ship ripping itself open, snapping all its hawsers at once in a churning of molten sea and shattered rocks. All the seagulls flew away.

— Go! cried Gringo. 

They spread their wings.

They departed on the wind, with the sharp cry of the seagulls and the wild foam.

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.

XXIII

THAT

All that remained was a black hole between shattered crystals.

Gringo stood up. His eyes wandered around him as if he were waking from a nightmare. Then the strong scent of the pine trees entered him, the soft crunching of the snow: he didn't dare move. His eyes returned to that black hole — was he dreaming? Which side was the dream? Ma was standing behind the spring, very straight and tall in her white cape, almost merged with the snow, motionless. Not a sound. Chacko had gone back to his frozen tundra — perhaps carrying Rani on his mane, galloping out there in another dream. He bent down, took a handful of snow in his hand; a ray of sunlight fell like an island of gold. Life was soft and without a murmur — like a great gaze stretching on and on and losing itself, looking only at this infinity of snow in its own heart or out there, without distance and without center, everywhere immersed in itself, like a myriad of crystals each gazing at its own infinity and the myriads of infinities in each small crystal. And everything was forever in a total harmony. Rani appeared among the snows, tiny in her ermine cap, perhaps emerging from a shimmering crystal. Life began to move again with a "you" and a "me."

— Well — did you remember well?... What is it like, remembering?

— It hurts.

— Then what use is it?... Hurt, what is that? Chacko grazed all my leaves and left. 

She planted herself before him and puffed out her cheeks.

— We had a good time.

— What if he didn't come back?

She was dumbfounded.

— What are you saying! You really are strange, Gringo — you must have caught another "memory." 

She turned toward Ma, both fists on her hips:

— Ma, what is "hurt"?

And without waiting for an answer, she was off like a dart: "What use is an answer? It can't be breathed, it doesn't glide on the snow and it doesn't smell of anything. There. And it can't be grazed either — so?" She lived the evidence of each minute.

Gringo, for his part, wanted answers — many answers; he did not know that the true answer is the one that is grazed, like Chacko, and then there it is, it is done.

— Ma...

— Didn't you like the show? she said in a gently mocking tone.

— But...

— Yes-yes, I know — it's very serious! And She looked at him from the corner of her eye.

— But when it's very serious, that's the moment to mock a little, no?

— All those men... Oh! Ma, it was so dark!

— Were you not smiling?

— Yes. But... What does all that mean? Am I dreaming here, or was I dreaming out there? 

Gringo took Ma's hand; they walked together in the snow and everything seemed to dissolve: the questions, the memories, the pain... If he let the question slip, it would be over.

— Ma, tell me! Am I going back there?

— But you are there too, little one!

— That's dreadful.

— Yes, it's dreadful... if you are only there. And if you were only here, there would be no world!

— Rani would say: what use is the world? 

Ma burst out laughing like an amused little girl.

— It doesn't "serve" a purpose: it's a fact, like Chacko, the snow, and the cry of the geese behind the mist.

— It's a dreadful "fact."

— If you are only in the fact. Listen, little one... And there are also the crickets in the forest, are there not? And the white pigeons that fall like leaves on the riverbank — don't you remember? And there, on the boulevard, the student smiled above the swell.

— Yes, moments like that.

— But it is always the moment! It is always like that — only one doesn't notice. My great white country is always there, behind all instants and all lives — even behind that man about to be hanged. Not "behind": inside. It is inside the world, every minute. One notices or one doesn't. Did you not place your hand on the trunk of that chestnut tree? And then everything stopped: it was there. It is always there! You are not dreaming here — you are dreaming out there when you forget THAT, here. You are having nightmares, my little one, to tell the truth. One must live within the other — I am out there, in the forest, in many other forests, and I am walking here too, with a certain Gringo. There are not two worlds, little one: there is only one. My white corridor communicates with all times and all spaces. It is THERE, instantly. One must remember. Men remember only the nightmare.

— But why the nightmare?

— The nightmare is not remembering.

— But they are hanged, tortured — it's dreadful! Ma, I have been killed and killed... Perhaps at this very minute I am being killed again... somewhere.

— If you forget your smile, yes.

— That's very pretty... but it's dreadful.

— Yes, it's dreadful, my little one... but it's pretty too. One must bring the pretty into the dreadful.

— But why did the dreadful man need to be there at all! I don't understand. No, I don't understand. 

Ma remained silent for a moment. There was only the muffled crunch of the snow beneath their steps.

— And why did the eider need to be a fish first, and a shellfish, and a tiny seaweed in a ray of sunlight? The world moves. You are between the fish and the eider — a man between today and tomorrow. You also devoured pretty birds — now men devour with philosophies, religions, this and that... What do you know of tomorrow?

— In the courtyard, under the spotlight — it's dreadful. It may be today, but it is dreadfully dreadful today.

— But tomorrow must be made to grow in today! The white country must be made to grow in the old night. That is the "world." If there were no cries, they would grow only asparagus, my little one!

— Ma, you are mocking...

— No, I am not mocking. It is when I mock that I am most serious. Listen... 

She stopped in the snow. She was very straight and tall and majestic.

— Little one, the new earth must be made to grow.

— How?

— Not just a few "moments like that." When you have brought my great white country that does not die — not only into your head and your heart but into your body that comes and goes, every second — then...

— Then?

— Then you will be entirely the eider, and the old fish will fall away, as other creatures have fallen, and the beautiful will take the place of the dreadful. New wings must be made to grow! Beauty must be made to grow in its body and everywhere, every second. My great white country is there — always there, every second in the old earth!

— Will they want to?

— Did the fish ever want to become eiders?...

— When?

— Walk and you will know.

They arrived at the castle. The large windows sparkled beneath the snow. The cry of the geese could be heard in the distance.

— Look, she said.

Gringo leaned through the window. Everything was silent in the immense hall: a solid silence, as if time had stopped and been caught in a crystal. There was a being there, alone, dressed in white, bent over a table.

He turned around.

For a moment his gaze pierced Gringo. An immense, gentle gaze. Then everything melted away: the questions, the sorrows, today and tomorrow, here and there. It was THAT, pure. An eternal moment that filled everything. A softness that dissolves in softness and sinks to the far reaches of softness — as into a snow forever, and far-far at the end of all snows, into the softness again and again.

Gringo plunged in there like a seagull into the swell. He set out again into the old night for that joy.

Again and again... and always.

Like the cry of the geese behind the mist.

XXIV

THIS COUNTRY OF EVERY DAY

He plunged into his body as if into a dark forest.

— Well — you frightened me!

Gringo raised himself on one elbow. There was an emerald lake surrounded by tall ferns, the shrill cry of a bird taking flight, and then thousands of sounds — crackling, lapping, hissing — as if he had entered an enormous warm murmur. Rani was looking at him with great black eyes. She was half-naked, a bark skirt drawn tight beneath her breast. All of this was astonishing.

— Chacko... he left?

— Chacko?

It was something that faded very fast into a silver mist, and then it was nothing anymore... a "something" behind velvet folds, like the ripple of a breath on the lake, or like a cry of which only the echo would remain — and already it was nothing more than a whisper dissolved in a green night. Gringo ran his hand over his forehead.

— I don't know anymore.

"I don't know anymore" — and yet it is like a memory at the bottom, nameless, formless, something pulling. One no longer knows the country or the color, but it pulls and pulls — it is there behind, like a life not quite extinguished, knocking with its small fingers of light at a heavy door of night.

— Rani, I'd like to remember...

— It's so important... so important! And all at once he gave a cry:

— And Ma?

It was strange: Ma was like this memory that slipped away on all sides — to touch her was to be filled with this nameless country and with a very old memory...very old.

— She is tending to Vrittru's son.

— The son of...

Then everything came flooding back to Gringo's mind: the mangrove, Sukuri, Vrittru with his thumbs in his puma skin: "Show me your power."

— We must go immediately.

— Quino left to check.

— But what happened?

— You drank from the spring — you slipped on the rock and then you were as if dead... I was really scared. Yet you were smiling.

The old memory was gone — there remained only this country of every day, with its sounds, its gestures and colors, and its petty men going along like a riddle inside a riddle.

— Was it long?

She looked at the sun in the palm branches.

— You see.

It had lasted only as a bird's glide and a few warbles. It had lasted ages and ages.

— You've forgotten your machete again, she said abruptly.

— My machete? What for?

— You're strange, Gringo...

She had a way of saying "strrrange," and that small word echoed far off like a tenderness. He smiled. And just like that, from time to time, the door opens and lets out a small breath — from where, one doesn't know, but it is very familiar. Small words with no meaning that are full of light.

— Listen, little queen — what use is a machete?

— And what use is a man?

There was a sound of running, branches cracking. Quino appeared, out of breath:

— Shuma, Vrittru's son, is dead.

Rani went white. She clenched her teeth:

— Let's go.

XXV

THE KEEPER

GRINGO was walking toward the clearing — already he could hear the lamentations. And all of it seemed so futile to him, almost unreal, a kind of invented story, as if behind it there were something else, another story, and it is elusive. "There is the man after man," she had said. And suddenly Gringo had the impression that it was not "after," that it was not "out there" — it was there, behind... what? As one was there, behind a mirror of water for the pretty angefish of the emerald lake; there is another mirror... of what? Like a moment ago on that rock, something fleeting behind a silver mist — but it is there, it is THERE! It pulls. And perhaps one was like other fish, in a great lake of aquamarine and moving forests, for another Gringo who moved in a light air and in a story without sorrow?

What mirror? Where was the mirror? The smooth, clear surface one cannot see.

They arrived to the deep, plaintive sound of the great double flutes: two tireless notes flowing and creeping between the dense lianas. Night was falling. Groups of men and women murmured and lamented before Vrittru's hut. Ma's hut was set apart, almost at the forest's edge, behind the violet-wood. That was where Gringo wanted to go.

— Wait, murmured Rani.

But Gringo wasn't listening. He skirted the clearing, passed beyond the violet-wood.

— Hey! Gringo.

He turned. Already Vrittru was on him. Rani came running.

— Where are you going?

— To Her.

— No, you will not go to her.

— And why not?

There was such cold hatred in those eyes that Gringo gasped. Rani took his arm.

— You, little snake — go away. This is not your place. She straightened up and looked him straight in the eyes. He blinked. A rage seized him:

— No one goes to her.

— I will go, said Gringo.

He lunged towards the hut, stumbled on a stump — a sharp pain shot through his leg. Vrittru was already there, arms crossed over his belly, blocking the hut door.

— I said: no one. I give orders here.

— No, She does.

A cluster of chattering men and women gathered behind them. Then Brujos arrived, sluglike and bloated; Psilla, Brujos's wife, tall and straight, a toucan feather in her hair, watching the spectacle with a kind of delight. Vrittru was at his peak, strutting like a turkey in the farmyard.

— She has no more power, said Vrittru. She is old and senile.

Gringo grabbed Vrittru by his necklace. With a kick to the stomach, Vrittru sent him rolling three meters away.

— This time you'll get your lesson, mosquito. Gringo got up — he was in a white cloud; Rani's small hand pulled his arm: "Wait," she implored, "wait until tonight."

He turned to face those men and women in a circle, like vaguely frightened animals:

— You're not going to say anything? Gringo shouted at them. So you're not going to say anything? 

There was silence. No one moved.

— She is sick, said a voice in the crowd. She must be left in peace.

— It's not true! cried Gringo. She is NOT sick. She is never sick.

— Leave it, Gringo — what can you do? said a woman's voice.

Gringo turned back towards Vrittru. He was like a motionless puma, his muscles tense, barring the door. Not a sound came from Ma's hut.

— She is not sick, said Gringo. I want to see her. Vrittru raised his chin, planted his hands in his puma skin — he looked like a furious pygmy: a pygmy yes, puffed up like a wineskin and bristling with fake muscles.

— She is sick and you will not see her again, said Vrittru. No one will enter her hut. And if she is strong enough, she will come out on her own... Hey, let her come out... if she can. No one is stopping her from coming out!

He sneered. Psilla approached like a cat on velvet paws:

— You are very intelligent, Gringo, and you know that Ma is our beloved mother...

Gringo felt a retching. For a moment he stood looking at that stupid, cowardly crowd, that armored brute triumphant, that greedy, saccharine-sweet woman...

— We also know your skill and your intemperate youth, she went on, but who is stronger than the law of the tribe? Did she heal Vrittru's son? Can she even heal herself and walk to the violet-wood? Let's see... call her.

— Enough, said Vrittru. You, Brujos — you will stand guard and see to it that no one disturbs her.

The crowd dispersed.

Gringo was left alone between Vrittru's gleaming eyes and that woman's icy look. He knew Ma would not come out again. He knew he was alone.

— Come, said Rani, squeezing his arm.

The two notes of the flutes reclaimed the clearing: grave, endless, clinging like millennia of night and death and fragile lamentation in a swarming of shadows that closes in.

He tightened his belt, looked once more at that man... and suddenly he knew that it was not Vrittru — not this triumphant pygmy — but the keeper of death standing there, as Jacaré is the keeper of the lake, as the silver mists out there are the keeper of another country. He was not before an enemy or a man: he was before the-one-who-guards-the-passage. "Tonight I will go," he thought.

He turned toward Rani.

She was holding a machete in her hand.

XXVI

THE RED HOWLER MONKEYS

THE night shrilled, immense, pulsing, like another forest beneath the forest.

Gringo was waiting, feet dangling from his hammock, chin in his hands. Green or red fireflies zigzagged in the buzzing of the mosquitoes. He listened to his pain, his old question: a man — this creature — in the high shrill tide of the night, what was it? It was naked, it had no other sound but a question — it was its own croaking, its own dull music, like this throbbing in his torn leg. It was bent over nothing, which was like a burning, which was the only something. After millions and millions of years and forests begun again, would man — this creature — still be this burning question amid the shrieking of the lechuzas and the same great night?

It takes a long time, a man. Where does it go?

He slid down from his hammock; the cold blade of a dagger pressed against his hip. No — Vrittru was nothing. But this question? If She left, he was only a pathetic, pitiful croaking in a great rolling tide, and then the little Gringos start over again — until when? Where is the end, the MOMENT, of all of this?

He advanced meter by meter, feeling each stump, each dead twig — he had to go around Vrittru's hut to reach the violet-wood. What if he planted this dagger in Vrittru's heart?... For a moment he hesitated. "What use is a man?" Rani had said. But...

There was a glow between the hut's leaves — they were keeping vigil over Shuma; tomorrow at dawn they will cremate him. And then the little Shumas start again, the little Gringos.

A serpent slithered past him. Gringo was crawling without a sound. Now he was at Ma's hut. His heart was pounding as if it would burst. Brujos the slug was sitting on the violet-wood, twenty meters away... One would never be done with killing.

He slipped behind, skirted the hut, cut a section of leaves with his dagger. A small lamp burned on the ground, illuminating the hammock like a boat in the night.

She was all white in the hammock, motionless. Her arms lay along her body; She seemed to be sailing endlessly, silently, on an immense river of night. 

She was smiling.

Gringo took out a palm heart from his belt.

— Here, eat — it's good, he whispered.

Her hand took his; he felt like weeping, all at once, stupidly. That hand was cool as the small spring.

— You'll stay, won't you? Tomorrow I'll bring you algae from the waterfall...

She watched him, smiling. He knew it was vain — he knew She had not wished to heal Vrittru's son — he knew... and yet he asked, like that vain question in his heart, because it must burn, because one must go all the way to the end. And the end was like those diamond eyes with warm gold at the bottom. One sinks in there and all is well. But life? This life that is not yet. This "not-yet" that burns?

He held that cool hand, and his question drifted away with the shrieking of the lechuzas and the strident wake of the night.

— Ma...

She shook her head gently. She closed her eyes for a moment. Her hammock seemed to sway lightly on a crest of flames. Then... far away, from the depths of the West and the endless trees, like a great swell of night, rose the clamor of the red howler monkeys — low, rumbling, growing, from tree to tree and nearer, hoarse, nearer still, rolling through the night and invading the whole clearing with a deep howling like a fantastic savage chorus bursting from the bowels of the earth and its millennia of poignant nights — like the powerful, frenzied beating of a thousand fists pounding an immense chest of revolt and letting loose all at once a cry. Then slowly the demented swell receded from tree to tree, merged, dissolved in the gorges of the serra and a still denser night, leaving a trail of murmurs and a sudden silence like an abyss: a small man alone and throbbing, naked, derisory, in the high ancient jungle.

The hammock moved slowly, as if it had slipped its moorings. 

Gringo was still holding that hand.

He sank all at once like a cormorant into smooth waters, sucked to the bottom of a burning funnel.

XXVII

AROUND THE WORLD IN TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES

He sank with a dizzying sensation — he could almost feel the pressure in his ears — and suddenly he was plunged brutally to the bottom of a hole.

It was all black, like a cave. He touched the walls, groping for a way to escape from the suffocation. There was a slab. The slab filled with a flame beneath his fingers: a black fire. He was before the black door.

All at once it opened, and he was hurled into the wailing from a saxophone in the middle of a sun-baked, torrid, teeming avenue - the sound of the saxophone rose and rose, tore through the air and exploded in a shrill wailing, punctuated by a clash of cymbals, like a blow. Gringo had entered a completely insane world.

He walked along as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Rani hopped beside him, dressed in jeans and swinging her ponytail, while licking an ice cream.

— Ji! she cried — shall we go in?

Now the din was at its peak. A man, wearing a bass drum and brandishing a cymbal, continued his spiel:

— Come in, come in, ladies and gentlemen — it's cheap, it's around-the-world in twenty-four minutes. Only five bucks.

And brrm! — a clash of cymbals. Gringo hesitated for a moment.

— Say, Gringo, shall we go? Around the world for five bucks — that's cheap per kilometer. They went in.

The President of the Republic was making his speech in the middle booth, wearing a top hat. He looked quite distinguished. In any case, he had a pretty tie.

— Ladies and gentlemen, in summary, he was saying, the hour is grave — we have arrived at one of those turns of Destiny where one must choose...

A clash of cymbals.

— ...Choose, uh…, between the Democratic Truth of the right of peoples to freely dispose of the inheritance of their fathers — which is sacred, mind you...

The village constable (retired) entered with three ballerinas and a red nose. He held a patriotic banner and a megaphone. A small ballet: "Ah! Democracy, Democracy, Democracy..." Pirouettes and clashes of cymbals. The President continues:

— ...Or the shameful degradation of submission to the anti-democratic forces that cloud the budgetary and spiritual horizon of humanity...

— Bravo! cried a spiritualist.

— Consequently, it is three trillion new dollars to create the ultimate — I repeat, the ultimate, the last, the supreme oxygen bomb that will clean up once and for all...

And wham! — with a well-aimed throw, an anarchist threw a ball and knocked off the President's head. 

General emotion.

But, indomitable, he continued his speech: you don't need a head for that. 

Gringo had had enough. They moved to the next stall.

— I submit, members of the jury, that this man, by virtue of the fundamental provisions of the Law which no one may claim to be ignorant of...

The Attorney General tugged at his collar — it was very hot.

— ...This man, I say, in assaulting human dignity, has assaulted the very foundations of society, shaken public morals, and...

— What did he do? cried a voice in the crowd.

The Prosecutor turned red, like the constable who was just coming back with the banner and the ballerinas. Another small ballet: "Ah! Democracy, Democracy, Democracy..." Pirouettes and stamp-pad blows.

— Gentlemen, the Prosecutor resumed, this man — with no trade, no diploma, no social insurance, and no purpose in life — well, life, isn't it...

— Bravo! cried the butcher's boy.

— ...This sacred life that our fathers gave us in order to... ahem, to... well, to carry on as our fathers did, progressing in the... ahem, well, progressing in the fiduciary and intellectual circulation of humanity...

— Bravo! cried the critic from La Barbe Littéraire, who happened to be present.

— Therefore, I say, this man — useless, inefficient, and innocent — will have his head cut-off.

The guerrilla of the WRF (World Rage Front) seized a rubber grenade and with a resounding blow, unscrewed the pin in the Prosecutor's collar causing his tie, his robe, and his shirt to fall away. General consternation ensued.

Imperturbably, the Prosecutor continued: you don't need a shirt for that.

— Finally, the head is cut-off. There you have it. It's a matter of conscience, isn't it — well, of deep conscience, yes.

— Bravo! cried the Abbot — depth, that's it.

And the Prosecutor disappeared all at once into the legs of his trousers. 

Gringo had had enough.

— Listen, little queen — what are we doing here?

— You're strange, Gringo — if you keep this up, you'll get your head cut off. Or they'll put you in the madhouse. They passed beneath the third pillar of the portico. It was the booth of the latest Church — after Speak-analysis and the Hexagon, worthy successor to the Penta which followed the Tetra: the Medical and Obligatory Church.

The man in white was administering an isotope to a recalcitrant patient while a biologist in a skullcap was manipulating a molecule. But as everyone was carcinogenic at that time, it didn't make much difference — it was a question of time. The law allowed 63 years and 3 days for the average citizen — more than enough to drive his car to the office four times a day.

Gringo had frankly had enough.

— Hey there! the biologist exclaimed, pointing a threatening finger at Gringo. What are you doing here — you've got a straight nose, my man!

— Well indeed, said Gringo, grabbing his Greek appendage.

— But that's obsolete! It's even anachronistic and contrary to the law. And I tell you, I'm going to fix that for you with a quick and ingenious little chromosome intervention.

Gringo took three steps back. Rani nearly dropped her ice cream.

— ...I'll make you some nice curly little dolichocephalics, blond, just like that. And unasphyxiable. 

Gringo regained his composure -  his temper had risen quite a bit.

— But I don't want any little ones! And I don't want dolichocephalics — I want to get out.

— Hey there, young man — you can’t be serious. Get out? But you can't get out — obviously! Except through the door of the electric crematorium or the destruction of the planet. So... It's eternal science, for all perpetuity.

— Fine, said Gringo, grabbing Rani's hand. As for me, science is too scientific. I prefer the destruction scenarios. What about seeing the exotic side?

— You can’t be serious, said Rani, resuming her ice cream.

— Sacrilege! Renegade! the biologist cried, brandishing a finger. Gringo raised his eyes to the sky and sighed.

"LIBERTY — EQUALITY — EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF"

It wasn't heaven — but it was still something.

They passed beneath the arch while the cymbals beat time for the ballerinas: "Ah! Democracy, Democracy, Democracy..." and the condemned man's head rolled in a burst of funereal laughter.

Having passed the booths of the underdeveloped countries, the overdeveloped countries, and that of the deodorization of the Atlantic, Gringo and Rani wanted to sit in a park. There happened to be one, brand-new, with plastic grass and soft music, punctuated with a few urgent announcements: "Vote for Leon, candidate of the oppressed masses. He'll liberate you in one shot with a scrubbing-pad that's worth two." And since there were many people — it was a world where there were many people — Gringo and Rani found a place on a bench,with great difficulty, between two couples of lovers kissing passionately. "Attention, attention! the constable shouted in his megaphone, Have you taken your pill? The obligatory, pasteurized pill — two or more, or you'll be put in the operating rooms."

— Fine, said Gringo. I won't have any babies.

— You're anti-social, sighed Rani. You'll come to a bad end.

— Do you know where it ends?

— Well...

She put a finger on the tip of her nose, looked around. To be honest, it was really very crowded.

— I saw a great booth over there, she said. Let's go.

It was on the exotic far right. They passed before the stand of Coca-Yoga, the Expresso-Ashram, the New-Transcendent and the High-speed-Descender, and they arrived at the booth... of Liberation. Ah! that wasn't bad.

One entered there with an appropriately grave air.

The yogi was seated under a papier-mâché tree. He was all in white, as is fitting. He was meditating deeply, having first inserted a ear plug into each auditory canal. It was very quiet, behind the ear plug. There was also a canopy and an electric lamp beneath the canopy. Everything was perfectly dark — one awaited the hour of liberation. It was taking a bit too long, but still. Gringo sat cross-legged because liberation came faster that way. One could still hear the café-au-lait ballerinas of the moderately developed delegation in the distance: "Ah! Sacrosanct, Sacrosanct, Sacrosanct..." because one was finally in a sacred country. Everything was very solemn and definitive... when suddenly a voice was heard from the heights:

— Hey, Marcel — the generator has broken down.

— Oh no, said Marcel, raising his arms — the illumination has failed. 

General desolation.

Everyone stood up. It was another trick of the Marxists.

— I've had enough-enough-enough! cried Gringo. Let's get out of here.

— But Gringo, where to?

— Well, through the door.

He grabbed Rani by the hand and began pushing through the crowd. The constable arrived with his red nose and the President's top hat, which had miraculously escaped disaster (the hat):

— Hey-hey! he cried. Hey-hey! Got you, my lad — you want to get out of here, do you! Hey?... But you can't get out, little rascal — you can't get out at all. That's how it is for everyone. Hey!

And the ballerinas kicked up their legs in time. Psilla had a cockatoo feather in her hair and a red nose too: one-two, one-two, one-two... Cymbal clashing and saxophone.

— In 24 minutes you've seen everything, said Rani in her small steady voice. That's worth five bucks — admit it.

— So where do we go?

— Well, nowhere — we're already there.

— Fine, said Gringo. I'm going to complain to the Attorney General. I'll go all the way to the President if need be.

— But Gringo, we're all in the fair — the President too.

— Then what's to be done? said Gringo, discouraged. They sat on the edge of the curb.

The constable caught up with them: it was Vrittru with a red nose and a two-colored belt.

— Hey-hey! he said, driving his hands into his belt. I announce that the generator has been restarted: buses, post offices, automatic barriers and illuminations — everything running!

— Fine, said Rani. Then we walk where?

— That, said Vrittru, removing his fake nose, is not necessary; as long as it's running, that's all that's needed... You can take the bus and come back tomorrow — it never closes.

— Fine, said Rani. Then we take the bus.

— To go where? asked Gringo.

— Ah! said Vrittru, spreading his arms wide. It's all the same everywhere — there's no way out, what can you do? And he put his fake nose back on.

XXVIII

THE TROUSERED MEN

ALL that remained was to wait — for what? No one knew. Gringo was vaguely looking for a bus that was going somewhere.

— What if we got a plane ticket to Honolulu? said Rani.

— And which bus would we take there? Rani was speechless. That was rare.

"If I had a fake nose, at least," thought Gringo, "perhaps I could get used to it?"

— Tell me, little queen — could we set up a booth for real noses?

— What?

He gave up trying to explain. Besides, he would be labeled as an isotope at once and filed under an exotic heading. It was very convenient: everyone had their label on their back — you couldn't make a mistake.

— Next time, said Gringo, I'll be reborn in a kangaroo skin.

— What?

She was trying to picture Gringo with a long tail.

— But that's an extinct species, Gringo — you're out of date! Now there are only men.

Then, he thought, the kangaroos were screwed too — there was nothing to be done; we were screwed from all sides. A fake nose was perhaps the best way to breathe.

— They've explained everything, said Gringo. There's nothing more to be done.

— Then go get me an ice cream and let's wait. They waited.

An hour, a year, a century — one doesn't know. From time to time there were coups d'état, but it was all the same — one started again with another top hat.

— I've had my fill, said Gringo.

— Then go get me an ice cream, said Rani. It's hot. And they waited some more on the edge of the curb.

A tide of trousers passed — more trousers, always trousers — a day, an hour, a century: the trousered-men passed. Gringo had taken his cheeks in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees: he looked and looked at those trousers. From time to time, a madman fired into the crowd — but it was all the same; one went on with another pair of trousers.

Then Gringo began to grow uneasy.

— Time is long, he said.

— What use is time? asked Rani.

— Well... to measure.

— Measure what?

— I don't know — trousers, perhaps?

— Then it's no use.

And she rested her elbows on her knees.

— Perhaps we're reaching the end of time? she added pensively.

— No: as long as there are trousers and eyes looking at trousers, they will have to be measured.

— Ah! said Rani. Then let's take off our trousers and close our eyes.

Gringo hesitated still; gray columns rose on a horizon of trousers. The saxophone and cymbals could be heard, along with an energetic trombone, from time to time. "What use is music?" thought Gringo. Things were beginning to get a little confusing.

— But why do they keep on! exclaimed Rani. Suddenly a trouser leaned over him.

— What time is it, Sir, please? Gringo looked to the right, looked to the left, up and down the columns, amid the high wail of the saxophone. He shook his head between his hands:

— My watch has stopped.

— Ah! said the man. Then I'll be late. 

And he resumed his place in the columns of trousers. Gringo looked again. And suddenly he felt like weeping — why, one doesn't know. It was heartbreaking — what it tore, one doesn't know. A hole of pain. "Perhaps it's because of my real nose," he thought... "Perhaps that's why they all put a fake nose on their trousers? To hide the grief." Then Gringo stood up — he grabbed a trouser-man by the arm:

— What time is it, Monsieur?

— 17 hours, 22 minutes, 34 seconds.

— Ah! I knew it. Thank you, Monsieur.

He shook his head, looked again at the horizon: "Thirty-five seconds, thirty-six seconds, thirty-seven seconds..." And he wondered why it didn't go the other way: "Thirty-six seconds, thirty-five seconds, thirty-four seconds..." — and at the end it would be over. But no! It always increased: "Thirty-nine seconds, forty seconds, forty-one seconds..." and forever and ever — eons and eons of trouser-time piling up: "Forty-nine seconds, fifty seconds..." Gringo looked right, looked left, looked ahead... Not a bird in sight — trousers and trousers every second, going out there toward what? It was suffocating all at once — what was suffocating, one doesn't know. The suffocation suffocated. "Fifty-one seconds, fifty-two seconds..." The hour was coming — which hour? One doesn't know. The hour of what? There was no hour — no hour, no place, nowhere, never, never — one arrived nowhere by the second. Time was dead! Geography was dead, buses were dead. One was sitting there on the curb, for the eternity of eternities... ah!

Gringo let out a small "ah!" — like a small squeak. Everything went white in his head.

"Ma," he said, just like that, the way one says "blub!" before going under. She was there, smiling.

Gringo blinked.

— What time is it? he asked.

— It is time, said Ma.

— Ah! said Gringo.

— Open your eyes and look.

XXIX

CLICK-CLACK

HE opened his eyes and looked.

It was all the same: columns and columns.

Ma was standing near him, very tall — She seemed to tower over the whole crowd. But no one saw Her. She was dressed in white light.

— I see nothing, said Gringo. It is still going on.

— But no, little one — you are looking with your everyday habit.

— Ah?

Gringo looked again, craning his neck a little. The tide continued. He found himself suddenly inside the head of a trouser-man: it went click-clack, click-clack... Then he slid into the head of another trouser-man: it went click-click-clack, click-click-clack... Then, like a monkey in the branches, he began to slide from head to head: clack-click, clack-click, click-click-clack; clack-click, clack-click, click-click-clack... It was an enormous empty railway hall, with a metronome clicking in a cavernous silence — louder and louder, louder and louder: click-clack, click-clack, click-click-clack. And then from time to time a loudspeaker and a very slow, toneless voice, also cavernous: 17 hours, forty-two minutes, thirty seconds; 17 hours, forty-two minutes, thirty-one seconds... click-clack, click-clack, click-click-clack... And it went on and on across the horizon — to Chinese Turkestan and Kamchatka — with language making no difference: clock-clock, cluck-cluck-clock, clock-clock, cluck-cluck-clock... From time to time, in a small corner of a head from a lost country, there was a small misfire: it went zzii-zzii-ztt... like a bird whose neck is wrung, ploc! That must have been a lost man, or a manufacturing defect — zzii-zzii-ztt-ztt-ploc... or someone who hadn't read the morning paper properly. And Gringo slid from branch to branch. Sometimes a whole column derailed: crac-crac-croc-cric. That must have been a change of government, or a military purge — or perhaps a religious crisis. But they recovered very quickly: clack-click, click-click-clack... On the whole, none of it was especially amusing. Gringo returned to his own head. He knocked on it a little to see if it went click — but the clock had stopped: a lost man.

Ma watched him with a mocking air.

— Well, said Gringo. It's not amusing. How long will it go on like this?

— Don't know, said Ma... As long as they want.

— Then, said Rani, always practical — why don't you go get us a glass of beer and two ice creams while we wait?

— Listen, Rani, you're not funny.

— Ma said "As long as they want," so... Unless there's a general derailment?... We can stock provisions while we wait — you can bring sandwiches too.

Gringo was exasperated — none of this was funny at all.

— But Ma, he cried — isn't all this going to change?

— It's a delicate operation, she said. But one can try — oh! I've been trying for a long time... But you see, they go clock-cluck, click-click-clock, in Japanese, in Hindu, in Marxist and in Ashram, and at the Sorbonne and in... the whole list.

— Yes, that I saw — or rather heard. Can't you stop the clock? The world's zero hour? That wouldn't be bad. I've had enough.

— Have they had enough?

— Perhaps they don't know it can be otherwise? They only want to improve the clock. They can't conceive of time without a clock... Nor can I, for that matter, but I'm fed up.

— They would all have to be "fed up," as you say. They would all have to be calling for something else. Is it possible to do that against their will?

— Listen, said Gringo, exasperated — no one asked to emerge from a DNA molecule, did they?... A small change of molecules?

— No, my little one — not a change of molecules: they'd make new clocks with other molecules. No, it's simpler than you think.

— But damn it! cried Gringo, whose patience was never his strong point. With or without molecules, it must be done. This mad clock has to be stopped! You send a small white wave: it stops.

— You'll stun them. You see the little Marxist who no longer knows his catechism, the little Ashramite who no longer knows his catechism, the bus driver, the dental surgeon who no longer know their catechism — no one knows their catechism anymore: the top hats fall, and the fake noses, the turbans and the bishops' bonnets, Gandhi's bonnets, aviator's bonnets, magistrate's bonnets — all the bonnets...

— Ji! cried Rani. That would be really funny!

— You'll have no more sandwiches and no more ice cream, Gringo interrupted.

— Listen, little one...

Ma turned toward Gringo; her diamond eyes shone like a star in the night.

— I am not here to perform irrational miracles...

— The rational doesn't matter — it's part of their catechism. The clock must be stopped, Ma! It's urgent.

— Show me 172 men — as many as there are countries — who TRULY WANT to stop the clock.

— I've heard a few little zzt-zzts here and there. You yourself told me it was time: "This time it is."

Then Gringo stopped — his words fell away. He saw again that courtyard beneath white spotlights, those shot here, those hanged there, those prisons and prisons in every catechism in the world — that enormous hygienic and mathematical Prison with ice cream and saxophone, those gray and gray columns mounting the assault on a sky without birds, with a few helmets and capsules to change moons and beat their metronome under other ionospheres: click-clack, click-click-clack, on Venus and Neptune and the Constellation of an extinct Swan.

Then Gringo cried out:

— Ma! It isn't possible, it isn't possible!... And it was as if the whole earth were crying out in a single small human heart — oh, so futile.

Ma smiled and stroked Gringo's hair.

— I needed a cry, little one — a single true cry to undo the magic they invented. For I do not perform miracles: I only undo what they have added.

Then She let her gaze wander over that crowd.

— I'm going to show you the non-magic, the world without their magic, as it is. 

And She took the hands of Gringo and Rani.

XXX

ONCE UPON A TIME...

THEY entered the Park. There were still real chestnut trees. Children played on a pile of yellowish sand, like an island. They were fighting: "But I tell you it's mine — it belongs to me!..." And the crowd, the crowd everywhere. Students on the benches were learning the secrets of Euclidean geometry, or the secrets of the glycogenic function of the liver — all the secrets, in short, for marching in the column.

— No! I tell you it's clonk-clonk, not cluk-cluk. The proof...

Gringo walked through all of this, looking for a bird in the chestnut trees. He held that hand in his. Ma was watching him from the corner of her eye.

— First of all, drop that abominably serious look of yours, my little one — that is the thickest magic of all. 

Gringo wrinkled his nose, tried a smile on the left cheek, a smile on the right cheek. It didn't work very well. Rani hopped about as if nothing were the matter.

— Smile at what? It's not funny.

— But my little one, if I transported you instantly to Amazonia with the beautiful trees and the birds... and the mosquitoes — you'd smile for three minutes, and then... it wouldn't be "funny," as you say; you'd go on asking the question: you'd pass through the trees as through the metro door or the park gate. Huh, who is it that passes here and who passes there — who?

— I'm tired of being a man.

— But you're not yet a man! You're just a clever little marmoset.

— That's not bad! said Rani, who knew nothing of the evolution of species.

— You only know all the little click-click-clocks they've put in your skull and your chromosomes. You see nothing — not in Borneo, not here. You see only a mirror of your click-click-clock. But that, my little one, is the old magic. Except from time to time, when your question burns a little too fiercely, you pass through it. Then you let out a small cry.

— Yes, but it all goes white. I want to pass through with my eyes wide open.

— But you can't pass through with your false eyes, little bird! If the canary passes through with its canary eyes, it will see only canary. Doesn't that make sense?

— Oh! as for me, you know — "visions"... I don't feel like St. Teresa, in any part of my chromosomes.

— But it's not a "vision," child! It is not seeing something other than what is there: it is THE vision — seeing what is truly there, without the little click-clocks of an invented geometry and an invented physiology.

— But one doesn't invent physiology! One is inside it.

— Exactly: you are inside it — you are all inside the invention.

— Get me out of the invention.

Rani was watching them both with a finger on her nose.

— Ma, tell us a pretty story, she said. Gringo, he is a bit...

Ma smiled. She drew them down an alley of the Park and they all three sat beneath a chestnut tree. She placed her hands in the folds of her white dress and closed her eyes.

— Once upon a time there was a pretty seagull...

Gringo looked up — and suddenly it was something so familiar, as if he felt the wind in his ears and smelt the seaweed. He smiled.

— ...She made her nest in the cliffs of the great fjord, up there, and she loved nothing so much as to plunge into the wind and suddenly open her wings, upside-down in the sky with a cry of wonder, or to float there on the soft wind, and then dive like a flash into the green waters where the little herrings glitter. It was so fresh, so delightful to feel the water, the wind on the smooth feathers — to swim or to fly as one embraces the azure sky or a myriad of small salty bubbles. And sometimes one stayed quiet, one feet in the white sands, listening endlessly to the naked lapping of the fjord, like a murmuring stream of light that stretches and creates a ripple of shells on the shore... She must have been an ancestor-seagull of Gringo's, because she began to "watch" the fjord instead of diving into its waters and drinking the fresh azure that smelled of lavender and foam. She was no longer the azure — she was no longer the green basin nor the light kelp floating between the craggy rocks. An invisible net fell over her wings... It was the world's first geometry and its first bird-cry caught in the net: the bird-Gringo, the bird-me — but never again-never-again the bird-bird, nor the seagull in one wing-beat into the wave.

— That doesn't surprise me coming from you, observed Rani calmly. Who would have thought...

— Then the pretty seagull, from gaze to gaze and from small cry to small surprised cry, found herself caught in a second net, a third net, heaps of small blue or rosy nets making colors — algae of her own and other seagulls out there. Then one day it was black with nets upon nets; she could no longer move — she was caught in a small pool of extinguished light, on one leg, and two turning round and round in the net. This was already a Gringo very advanced in the physics of the world: he knew all the stars that are measured through the meshes, and the cardinal points to replace the direct flight and the smooth glide through the great garrulous trade winds. And finally they put a great net over the world-map, and the earth was left planted on its ecliptic, like a stork on a roof. That is where they found Newton's law, the law of the pancreas, and all the little laws to measure the law of their net.

— It's a sad story, said Rani.

— It's only the beginning of the story. Now look — they invented the net precisely so that "someone" would look... At the end of the story, one day, one little Gringo, two little Gringos, a few lost little Gringos here and there began to remember the pretty fjord in the mists, and a seagull's cry echoing out there, beyond nets after nets, like the breaching of clouds by light over a winged space. They made a first hole in the mesh and it was dazzling and white because their cavernous eyes no longer knew the silver blade on the windy breakers, nor their two arms the joy of embracing so much of the world with a cry of rapture. And then all the wise ducks absolutely wanted to keep them sheltered in their reasonable net — but it was only a duck's reasoning, or reasoning for anything on two legs walking with trousers and geometry.

— And now it's time! cried Rani.

— Yes, it's time — look!

Then they opened their eyes wide and saw the prettiest fairy tale in the world. Only they were not fairies: they were little Gringos, little Ranis — perfectly natural... little humans on two legs who were finding their light memory again, and a world-map cut loose from its moorings.

XXXI

THE UNMOORED WORLD-MAP

SHE took the small blue and brown globe in her hands — with its islands, its continents leaping from the water like dolphins, and a few wisps of clouds, white like cream cones, for the gentle dolphins. The globe fit quite comfortably in the hollow of her lap.

— Note that there are many small globes like this one, she said to Rani, who was sticking out her tongue — perhaps because of the cones. But we'll try on this one: it's a very pretty globe. If it doesn't work, we'll go and look elsewhere.

Delicately, She took the Greenwich meridian between thumb and forefinger and pulled on it gently: clac! It snapped like a rubber band. All the clocks began to feel dizzy.

— You see — there are many of these. It's quite a tangle. Look how they've laced it all up...

She caught a few parallels of latitude and clac! — the Arctic Circle was blown away. The Bering Sea gave a shudder and the North Pole was no longer quite sure which way was north. Then with one sharp tug, She broke the equator.

— Phew! said Rani, feeling her stomach. It had been tight for a long time.

— You see, said Ma. Now their net is all full of holes.

Gringo was watching all of this with astonishment. Then a booming voice was heard:

— Hey, Marcel — the generator has broken down. It's a terrestrial breakdown.

— Damn! said Marcel.

— Damn! said Gringo.

Then he opened his eyes wide and witnessed the most astonishing spectacle ever given to men to see — as if, in truth, they had waited three billion years to witness it: the protozoa were wriggling in their hole. But it was the whole earth that was wriggling, suddenly seized by a strange sensation.

First, Gringo felt an odd ebullition in his body... countless microscopic currents of air were passing through the whole compact lattice of venules, dendrites, and nucleoli: it was airing out, lightening suddenly, de-coagulating; one had the sudden impression that an enormous, countless tangle was unravelling, cracking everywhere, releasing its minute threads, loosening its knots — and it poured in, from everywhere, a microscopic, countless tide rushing through the whole body like small channels of bubbles and light. One breathed, swelled; the whole body was dilating with a kind of porous joy, as if it had not breathed for millennia and millennia — as if it had never breathed before — and suddenly, oh! a frothy, light, luminous draught of ozone streaming everywhere, sparkling everywhere, spreading everywhere: the body began to flow out of its skin-bag like a multitude of small silver rivers going and going, touching everything, tasting everything, marveling and cascading through meadows of light. And then the eyes became very strange: they were untied too from their two black holes and they scattered, streamed in all directions, lit up in every corner, at the end of each small silver stream, through every pore — a myriad of lightning-eyes touching, sensing, seeing. As if to see were to drink, to flow with it, to beat and flutter in all the flutterings of the world; it was no longer "seeing," it was no longer "outside": it was inside everywhere, like innumerable small silver seagulls plunging into innumerable small pools and tasting all together the great white dazzling of the sea. An immense shattered gaze, simple, immediate, at the heart of everything. An unmoored body, coursed by salt and great wind. An endless, crystalline, almost musical breathing — like a swell mingled with seaweed and sea-spray losing itself in another swell that was lost on blue shores. It was the great breathing of the world, like a breath of joy through the seas and the hills, and in each small murmuring pool like a rustling of scattered stars.

Gringo was blinking as if about to fall overboard and plunge into the world-map for good — with the green dolphins and the whales. Rani was holding firmly to the folds of Ma's dress:

— But just look, Gringo — what's the matter with all of them?

XXXII

THE WORLD AS IT IS

IT was very strange.

These skin-bags, you see — very watertight, where each one lived in their cozy little corner, gurgling, with telephone, vocal cords, and a guide book to communicate through the walls with other walls equipped with telephones that communicated with other telephones, and a few smiles painted on the walls — now they were all full of holes, like a sieve. But no cyclone, nothing before had perpetrated such a catastrophe! Because when walls are flattened you rebuild them — but how do you rebuild a flattened nothing? 

All the Larousse dictionaries had been flattened; flattened the Michelin guides, and the peaceful circulation of DNA from father to son. The whole system had been disrupted. And what would DAN 06 22 say to MOL 30 29? Hello-hello!... what? The walls were apparently intact — everything was intact — but there was nothing but wind inside, and what a wind! An enormous, silent wind.

All at once, four billion mouths fell open.

The student on his bench dropped his textbook of "Natural" Sciences. He was the first to be struck by the white tide.

— Say, Alexander...

— What? said Alexander.

— Er... what? said Leon.

— But what-what? said Alexander.

And what-what-what, and what-what-what?

— It's not natural, said Leon at last.

And all the students dropped their books on millions and millions of benches in all languages. It was a fantastic spontaneous mass unlearning and learning truancy all at once. Right in the middle of a geography lesson, the Atlantic was breaking on the cliff as if one were there, and the little white bears were sliding effortlessly on the ice floe. One couldn't speak about a thing without it being immediately there — or one being there. It was living geography. It was the-truth-there. And what was not there was not there. But in the room next door, the maths teacher remained with his chalk in the air, mid-asymptote: there was nothing there — only wind.

— What does it mean? he said.

He took his hat and left the classroom: he had forgotten everything.

"And what does it mean?" said the chemistry teacher. "What does it mean?" said the physics teacher, while his atoms collapsed into galaxies and his galaxies plunged into black holes, which were the great white corridor of all time. "What does it mean?..." Everywhere-everywhere it was "What does it mean?" The President of the Republic hung his top hat on the peg, turned to face his ministers, gathered around him in a circle, to... for what? He put his top hat back on and fled. The town hall secretary dropped his pen. The abbé leaped four steps at a time from the pulpit in the middle of Our-Father... The hairdresser stood with a raised comb, before a blond coiffure gazing in the mirror — and suddenly saw, astounded, a small dog leap out of his chair. "But what does it mean?"

The gray columns stopped. They looked at each other.

A worldwide lapse of memory.

— But good God! What's happening? exclaimed Alexander.

He felt his pockets, felt his head. Nothing was left. And suddenly he remembered a corner of Iceland with a small rocky lake and a child, hand on cheek, gazing. That was all that remained. It was there. All that remained was what each one carried in his heart.

Nothing remained but what existed. What did not exist no longer existed.

And the electric lamp fell on the yogi's head, who saw the stars.

Then, truly, a fantastic spectacle unfolded before the eyes of Gringo and Rani and the young student who held onto his corner of the lake by a thread: there were those who had no corner at all, anywhere - nothing inside them but grave problems and entire libraries. Ploof! — they suddenly slid into the legs of their trousers: there was no one there anymore. A small heap of trousers on the boulevard. Thousands and thousands of empty trousers.

There was a panic.

And then, suddenly, it was a fabulous menagerie. From the remaining trousers there began to emerge rats, little rabbits — numerous rats - porcupines, bulldogs, pomeranians, startled little hens clucking across the boulevard, and many serpents of every hue. It was quite astonishing. Monkeys — oh! a multitude of varied monkeys and parrots. It was suddenly like an immense zoo — each one returning to his original state. All the extinct species as if re-born and walking on two legs or four.

That was the world as it is.

And a few men standing upright, going zzi-zzi-ztt, feeling their pockets and pulling a forgotten old kite from the depths of their heart.

The issue of population explosion was resolved in one stroke.

Nobody had to die: everyone was going home, in the skin of a canary or a zebu, perfectly happy to be what they are. 

As for the rest, they were just forgotten trousers. The rats went back into the sewers.

Each person returned to his true self. 

The others left singing at the top of their lungs while the customs officers stared at those strange wire fences in the middle of the fields: "But what on earth does that mean?" And the great Imam went off to shave his beard. Rani was stamping her feet on the ground. 

Gringo was smiling. 

Then Vrittru stepped out of the "Around-the-world-in-24-minutes," looked left and right, held his fake nose between his thumb and forefinger, pulled it out and burst out laughing — laughing as he had never laughed before in his life. And suddenly he set off in the skin of a turkey, waddling on two legs and shaking his red wattle. He had nothing left to guard; everyone had come out of prison.

— Shall we go home, said Rani. 

Everyone was going home. 

The clocks had stopped. 

The men were considering the dream they were going to live. For dreams were all that remained. 

Each one was their own dream, in red or black, as an elephant or a poppy. 

It was the beginning of the Times-of-Truth, when no one could be what they were not. And the prisons opened in a flight of white doves. 

Ma was smiling. 

— Wait, you're not there yet. And She disappeared. 

A student sat down on the edge of the pavement, amid the forgotten trousers, and began to play the flute.

XXXIII

THE TRIBE

HE took Rani's hand. They had journeyed together through so many times and countries — perhaps on other planets too; they had loved, sought, suffered, knocked on so many doors, passed through pyres and prisons, laughed and begun again; and each time a light wind erased the wrinkles and the memories: it was always new, it was always the same — in brown or fair skin, with laughter, tears, a tunic or no tunic, blue jeans or a solitary king's crown; the same gaze on red sands carried off in a fiery wind, or on that small pool of white sand; the same glimmering of sky here and there on that great river of all lives, all countries , as on that small igapó where the crickets' song rose. And what is it that gazes? What is the story of all these stories — sad or joyful, bare or colorful — what is the thread? And what has not been found, that we always begin again with other sorrows and the same gaze at the bottom, like a child's gaze, on that beach or another, listening to the cry of a seagull in the surf, or out there behind the mists, the cry of the geese — always a cry, always a gaze. What is it that cries? What is simply not there when we will have invented everything, un-invented everything, re-invented everything, run on the wall with the little cat or plunged into the swell with all the seagulls in the world — ah! what is missing?

For Gringo was the insatiable one.

It was perhaps the earth's cry for its absolute joy. What good is an earth, if it does not lead to joy?

He took the white corridor with Rani, while the student on a pavement strummed his flute — searching for a note, another note, as if groping through a meadow of dreams, searching for the note that would suddenly spring out, irrefutable, and sow a dawn of tiny enchanted flames in his heart and over the world. He was searching for the song of the new world.

Gringo arrived with the dawn in the high shrill forest. 

He was holding that white hand with its small violet lines.

She had her eyes wide open in that hammock — like a boat. She was watching him without a word, without an expression, so motionless — and from the depths of those lake-like eyes rose great centuries of flame and silence. It was almost unbearable. Gringo felt a similar flame rising in his heart, and it rose and rose, swelling with gold, flooding his body with a bath of massive fire as if everything was about to burst. Something was about to tip over; he had the impression he was about to exit through every pore of his skin, or flatten suddenly — crushed by that frightening density. She did not move; nothing moved. It was not a being that gazed — it was what? Perhaps eternities of gazing that had passed through all the flames, all the sorrows, all the deaths — deserts and winds of night and spaces, more spaces — and which were now caught suddenly in a freeze of light and fire, gazing still further at the heavy, inscrutable door of the future. She was pushing a door in the heart of Gringo, or of the world. He thought he was going to faint.

She smiled. Everything stopped.

The unbearable marvel had come to an end. 

Gringo remained at the edge of the Mystery.

It was like a formidable golden carillon behind a door.

Then the jacouis resumed their plaintive two-note melody, always two notes: the old mortal grip reclaimed the clearing once more with the cry of the macaws and the murmur of men.

— I'll come back tonight, he said.

She shook her head gently.

Gringo's heart sank; he wanted so much to say something, to seize this moment forever.

— Ma...

He kissed that small hand with its violet lines, and went out.

Brujos started screaming. Gringo ran straight across the clearing without looking. Vrittru leaped on him and seized him by the throat. Gringo stared blankly. Vrittru's arms went limp as if struck powerless. Rani came running with a machete in her hand. She stopped. The entire tribe watched in silence.

— Cowards! cried Rani. 

No one moved. 

Psilla came forward with her toucan feather in her hair.

— But we are telling you she is dead, Gringo. Come now — be reasonable.

Gringo watched uncomprehendingly. Rani stood hesitating: if she moved, they would kill Ma and kill him.

— Do you want to take Ma's place? Psilla continued in her cold tone. Do you want to rule?

— Come now, Gringo, said a voice in the crowd — they tell you she is dead; the healer said so. Do you want to confuse everyone?

— Call her, said Psilla.

Gringo looked right and left; he was like a cornered animal in the middle of that crowd that wanted death and believed only in death. No words came out of his mouth.

Vrittru took a step forward, thumbs tucked in his belt:

— We have tolerated this foreigner and rebel long enough, he said. I propose that we bring Ma's body out so that everyone can see — then we will dig a big hole in the clearing and honor her befittingly.

There was a silence in the clearing.

— But She is not dead! said Gringo in a muffled voice.

— Well then, let her come out! Ah! enough of this, Gringo. I propose that this lying, subversive mosquito who wants to disturb the spirits and violate the Law be banished from the tribe.

Brujos approached from behind Psilla:

— Perhaps he wants to divide us — to form a new tribe? Steal our territory, our resources?

No one said anything.

Everything was false, and everything had become true. 

One of the tribe's elders came forward:

— Do not lament. Curupira is great — he will save us. He has taken our mother to his home. 

Gringo looked around him. He looked once more at the small hut behind the violet-wood. An eagle began to screech overhead.

He turned his back to them and walked into the forest.

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.

XXXV

THE VIOLET GORGE

THEY walked for days, months — following the rounded flanks of the serra where gorges sometimes plunged deep, with roaring, tumultuous rivers ; they crossed glaucous, motionless swamps like a curse which suddenly emerged into delirious clearings where mad birds had been chirping for ages; they ran to the rhythm, walked, walked again in the long soft rain as if through grey algae — as through centuries of perdition in an enormous tangle of scents sometimes torn by the cry of a macaw; they listened to the night, listened to the day, then night again — hissing, grating, unchanging — and the muffled thunder of giant trees collapsing, like an abyss, and the silence sinking into a still greater night, immobile, mute, opening piercing eyes on its own mystery. It was without end, without beginning, without yesterday or tomorrow, without out-there: two small children of man walking and walking — and why? They said nothing more, wanted nothing more; they went on, indefinitely, one step, another step, trees and more trees, cries and more cries — toward the East, always toward the East, like two small white flames in the belly of the millennia.

And suddenly Gringo sat down.

His leg was swollen — he could go no further.

He would go no more to the East, go no more anywhere. He had reached the end of the journey.

The end of nowhere.

Rani watched him with eyes as immense as the night. A river could be heard rumbling in a violet gorge.

She took a little water in her cupped hands to cool that burning leg. He shook his head gently. She took one last small alga, moistened it a little with some powder.

— Eat.

He shook his head.

Then she sat down, hands flat on her knees, eyes fixed, looking straight ahead. She kept staring in the distance for a long time. Gringo looked at nothing; he listened to the fever rising in his body and pounding as if at thousands of small doors of pain. Then images began to pass in front his eyes — or perhaps he entered the images — like a multitude of small Gringos springing from everywhere, dressed in one color or another, each with a small living image: Gringo at the edge of a river scattered with white pigeons; Gringo seated before the sea where seagulls swirl; Gringo on horseback in an Abyssinian gorge, watching an eagle take flight; Gringo with a shaved head before a sacrificial fire; Gringo on a pavement, cheeks in his hands, with men and more men passing by; Gringo holding a soft white hand with small violet lines: "This time?" Then men again — four by four — and a strange emaciated Gringo with a number on his chest and the same great eyes of always. Eyes, eyes that gaze — blue eyes, always blue, like a sea from which the seagull will burst forth with a cry, always a cry.

— Ma... he breathed.

She was there, smiling, unchanged.

— Well — I've been waiting for you a long time!

— Ma, I'm going to die.

— Die? she said, as one speaks to a child... And you, little queen — are you going to die too?

— I go with him. What is dying?

— Aah! she said. Wait — I'll show you.

She took Rani's hand, took Gringo's hand, and they set off toward the violet gorge where the river roared.

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!

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 !

XXXVIII

BUT WHAT A STORY!

A cloak of shadow fell from their shoulders. They blinked.

They no longer knew the direction or the station. Nor their name nor their address.

It was all false.

Is it not so — you are to be guillotined tomorrow morning at 4:30, and then the door opens: there is no guillotine, there is no prison — blue sky and a blackbird singing. It is quite astonishing.

You are going to take the métro, you are going to the History class, you are going to the appointment, to the business that wraps another business that wraps another business — and then there is no more appointment — with whom? — no more business, no more History: one is there, is in the business, at the appointment, in the thick of History.

It is there, right under your nose.

But what a story, my children!

No more Bonaparte, no more Louis, no more Such-and-such XIII and XIV, no kingdom of France or China, no date, no plesiosaur that preceded the little rabbit, the archaeopteryx, and the ladybird. One is in the realm of the ageless creature, there, just hatched, and in the terrestrial kingdom that throbs and throbs, a rendezvous after four hundred million years of going along. Can you tell me what a lizard's story means to a goat? Or a caterpillar's story to a lark? And what is a man's story to...

To what, who and what exactly is it?

Four hundred million years of History, from prehistory to the present, all at once. And all the electronics rusted away, along with the trilobites, the catfish, and the left-handed hybrids. Obviously, one couldn't expect evolution to stop at the catfish, the penguin, or the little human being — but all the same, it was a tremendous leap.

And the earth blinked and blinked, searching for what this small creature was — which had not changed its skin, mind you, and was still on two legs, with a strange nose nonetheless, there on the ex-boulevard-Saint-Michel which had been saintly — but sainthood was still a goat's or a rabbit's story, or... well.

It was very naked all at once. It was even quite staggering.

There were many sudden heart attacks among all those who had only a cardiogram in their chest. They called emergency services — but the police were equally bewildered: were they responding to an emergency or a Neolithic having a breakdown?

Yet the earth was not shaking. So what was happening?

The scientists not yet in syncope said it was a mutation. But the mutation of what? What mutates? Which organ?

They felt their pockets, their stomachs — but it wasn't there.

They felt their heads — but it wasn't there either, unless it was a mutation of memory? And they shook their heads, shook their heads — like Gringo and Rani, there on the boulevard.

And it was so NOTHING, all at once...

Nothing — there on the boulevard, with two legs and a business suit.

The mutation is something that mutates, but here it was the nothing that mutated; it was the mutation within nothing. The nothingness was the site of the mutation. And can one be the caterpillar and butterfly at the same time?

It was the moment of nothing-in-between.

And they looked at each other, looked at each other — and as they had let their black eyes roll on the pavement, they sat down on the ground beside their eyes; they sat down with their NO in their hearts; they sat down in a burning nothing, because if it didn't burn it was no longer anything at all — it was death standing up in a business suit.

A flame.

Of what, for what — one doesn't know.

They entered the man of flame.

XXXIX

THE MAN AFTER MAN

AND suddenly there was nothing more to see: what use are lobster eyes to a rabbit? They were leaving the world of the lobster, the little rabbit, the little-little — in short, all the littles that made the little-littles, one sees with human eyes. And what if it were something entirely different? The world is certainly something entirely different — or something else again — from what the dragonfly on the water lily leaf thinks. A whole world of water lilies and dragonflies losing its bearings, its geometry, and its round eyes, with a few Gospels for the salvation of the water lily.

Something else — that's quite dark at first sight.

And yet it throbs, it throbs — there is something that throbs. Perhaps the very "it" that throbs through the lobster, the dragonfly, the little rabbit, and all the little-littles that landed one fine morning in a human skin. But "it" goes back very far — perhaps before the water lily and other water lilies floating on the ocean of galaxies. It is a very old throbbing. Perhaps it is the first throbbing of all the small creatures. And what is it?

A silence.

A formidable silence — like a hole that pierced the planet and many other planets, to the very depths of all planets inhabited by men, small lizards, or small things one cannot see, or great things one cannot see either. There was no ear for that and what use is a whale's or a pelican's ear for that far depth at the end — of what?

And yet it throbs, it throbs: it is a silence that throbs. And behold — here was man listening at the edge of the universe. And behold — here he was gazing at the end of time.

It was very far, very old.

It was very close in a chest.

A throbbing of a night that carries all nights, all pelicans in the night, all the sorrows of pelicans or men. A heartbeat carrying all hearts in the night, all the small creatures that have throbbed, will throb again, will throb always. It was without sorrow, without end, without aim: it beat in order to beat, because it was good to beat and beat again — with a dragonfly, a shrew, a galaxy, or a small cat. It was even very soft — like a wind through the disheveled galaxies, blowing through the rigging of the world, among its great dunes and thistles, its shrews, its dragonflies, its little human beings here and there. It was the music of the world, its wingbeat at the end of time, at the end of all the earth's sorrows; it beat there in a man's heart, as at the end of the mad galaxies, or not so mad — as at the end of the meadows never galloped in, out there, behind dreams never dreamed. It went far-far to the depths of the heart like a sudden love for those great abandoned shores, while a nameless eye opened slowly on a never-seen earth.

It was the dawn of the new world.

One didn't quite recognize it yet.

It floated like a smile at the edge of the lips. It smiled at nothing, at everything.

It smiled at its own love beating, beating — and it was so soft that it wanted to beat everywhere, in everything. It had no eyes and yet it had all possible eyes — of a dragonfly, of a tiny fish, of a star's twinkle; it had no ears and yet it listened to the same beating everywhere, the same music of man or after man, in a thistle on the great dunes or on the cliffs of the great lost stars. It was the lost man; it was millions of times man through all times, all unmoored ages, on light meridians snapping in the wind... or in this single second as soft as a smile hidden beneath great white petals.

And each one went toward its own smile. The flame went to the flame.

The dead returned to the dead.

The parakeet went to the parakeet and the goat to the goats. Each one went home.

But home was everywhere.

For the man after man was a multitude of small eyes in a great body of joy.

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