Felix Culpa
Page 6
Following the contours of the land.
Courses of the rivers.
Ever followed in his track.
Yonder to the north.
Walked on as though keeping a vow.
27
Day by day he changed.
Walk lighter, stumble less.
Grew callous to all ordinary pain.
Lost the fastidiousness which had characterised his old life.
Washing potatoes for breakfast in a pond.
Ate a turnip like an apple.
Few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger.
Little food is required to sustain a life on the edge.
Satisfied just by earth and water and trees and the sky over him.
Tracks worn through the forest and over the hills.
Once, in the heat of the day, he stripped off his clothes and submerged himself in the water of a lonely dam.
Wash my socks.
Bake dry upon the stones.
Looks at his feet in the sun, rubs his blisters and takes the dirt from between his toes.
Bathed by feelings.
Even the weeds moved him.
Seemed somehow removed from the passage of time.
Land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but forgotten.
Rest against a piece of granite.
Quiet under the long shadows of early evening.
Morning he presses on.
Avoiding inhabited places.
Walking ever deeper into the woodland.
Encountered few people.
Solitary horseman.
Campfires of gypsies squatting by little streams.
Shades of twilight were beginning to settle upon the earth.
Day tending to its end.
Loping stride.
Bounded right onto the ashes of a campfire that was still smoking.
Old man small and bent.
More frightened than I was.
Tried awkwardly to run off or to hide.
I don’t have anything, he said. You can look if you want.
Dressed in rags.
Each of his boots was of different colour.
Round the waist of his mackintosh, which was belted with string, hung a collection of pots and spoons.
Gathered some dry sticks.
Soon had a fire.
Billy of tea in the red flames.
Face in the small light streaked with black.
Oakmoss bearded.
Eye was overgrown by a cataract and he kept his head tilted as if he were trying to see around it.
Spoke in whispers.
Walkin’ this country for years.
Always on the road. You can’t stay in one place.
Nowhere to go but everywhere.
The oveja negra, no?
Scratched the back of his neck.
Began pulling off his boots.
Unwound the rags.
Horny foot.
Perfume of musk and piss.
Nice fire to warm your shins.
Start to cough.
Shaking up like a old engine.
Things he has seen.
Crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer.
North to the mountains.
Once found, the path was easy to follow.
Drew me a map in the mud.
In the gloomy dirt with his broken fingernail saying north were that direction.
Rattling some cough from deep down.
Voice when he spoke again sounded sober and quiet and tired to death.
You need to go on, he said. I can’t go with you.
Queer gleam in his eye.
Haggard and hollow.
Waits for the soft dry throat rattle that will free him.
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North along the river track.
Narrow paths among the folded lands.
Backwoods routes.
Deeper into the forest.
Untilled land.
Followed the tracks of wild creatures.
Wildcats and foxes.
Nibbled at roots and bulbs.
Cut my wants down to the bare bones.
After a few days without food one’s hunger becomes dulled.
New leanness and knowledge and wisdom.
Learned to listen to the birds.
Sounds of earth and trees.
Remove my shoes.
Walk barefoot in the grass.
Bark of fallen trees.
Feet grew hard to the trail.
Knowledge comes from my soles.
Best not to walk on the track but to keep a few hundred metres away.
Take advantage of every cover.
Colour of the place you’re in.
Picked up a handful of dirt.
Rubbed the dirt into my shoes and clothes, into the skin of my hands and face.
Blend into the surroundings and become invisible.
Like a mossy stalk.
A rock among rocks.
Pass unseen and unheard.
Buried his faeces.
Remnants of food.
Morning came I would set out again on my journey, leaving nothing to tell.
Like fish through water or birds through air.
Road that had to be crossed, and especially every bridge, represented a danger.
Crouched above the road beneath the fir trees.
Edges of the forest you can see without being seen.
Trucks are humming past.
Lines of cars.
Crept in and out of the clefts of the rocks.
Down the bank.
Ran across the road.
Ducked into the shelter of the woods.
Deepest forest was the greatest security.
Cloven track between tall trees.
Paths overgrown with brambles.
Haunting the thickets.
Lingering morning.
Winding through the undergrowth.
Rain falling amid the foliage.
Found himself in front of houses. Ruins.
Village that has been abandoned by all its inhabitants.
Little houses of stone nestling close to one another, perched on top of each other.
Flat-topped cedars growing out of the cracks.
Walked through the ghost village.
Pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty nails.
Inside the little rooms water jars and bowls.
A book. It had lost its covers.
Thumbed through the heavy bloated pages.
Spotted and stained.
Got ahead of books.
Made his way out into the cold grey light.
Remains of a small temple.
Roof had collapsed and only a few feet of the side walls still stood.
Weeds, grass and shrubs growing wild.
Burial ground no longer used.
Wooden crosses sticking up here and there.
Gravestones leant together.
Skeletons lying on their backs in the dirt down below.
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Countryside was changed, the summer past.
Leaves turned red. The purple blooms of thistles became black.
Days grow shorter.
Had been on the trail six weeks.
Seven weeks.
Lost track of the day.
Thought the month was October but he wasn’t sure.
Come a good peace and have been lucky with the weather.
Morning mists were rising.
Growing colder.
Sleep with my feet in the bag.
Hands between his thighs.
Clothes much consumed by the country.
Shoes were pretty ragged by now.
Hole that have a little socks in them.
Plodding along.
Grimy and hungry eyed.
Tired down into his bones.
North because it had become a habit.
Sometimes, as he walked, he did not know whether he was awake or asleep.
Mind had broken the leash, spurred on by fatigue.
Memory rising as if it has been pursuing me.
Cobwebby dreams of my past life.
Out of the tired cloud of his mind Ma’s face appeared, the dark and watery eyes.
Stooping figure.
Father who had never been comfortable with people.
Remembered all — every pinochle game, every woman, every sad night.
Thoughts congealing.
Human being survives by his ability to forget.
Feels a tug at his heels from hands growing up through the grass.
Dreamed that I saw my mother and it seemed as though she saw me but then turned her back on me.
Weather had turned bad.
Rained often, sometimes in sudden downpours.
Walk beneath the dripping trees.
Garments all were dank.
Feet mechanical.
Stumbling over roots and stones.
Fell headlong.
So weary that for some time he did nothing save rest upon the ground.
Face on the pillow of brown moist earth.
Began to shake with cold.
Felt of his right leg.
Ankle had begun to swell painfully.
Gash just above his knee.
Got up on his feet and essayed to walk.
Covered with mud, lame, half-blind.
Trail losing itself in the dark and the trees hunched close around.
Saw a hole and crept up it.
Hollow of a giant horse-chestnut tree.
Crouched inside and spent the night huddled there.
Daylight came slow and gloomy.
Hobbled forward.
Using a branch as a walking stick.
Drinking from rivulets.
Beard dipped into the water.
Ate handfuls of flowers and his stomach hurt.
Emerged upon the slope of a down.
Path across the fields.
Norther had blown in about mid morning.
See the rain coming across the country in a grey wall.
Nothing you could do except put one foot forward and then the other.
Bent over against the cold.
Wet to the skin.
Dusk turned to night.
Path down a densely wooded gully.
Pulled himself into some thick bushes and lay flat with his head on his arm.
Back against the cold earth.
Leg was throbbing.
Tried to lick some water from the uneven ground.
Sucked at his soaked trousers.
Awakened sick and trembling with cold in the first flush of the morning.
So weak that he could scarcely raise himself into a sitting position.
Limbs were almost powerless.
Stiff clear to his bones.
Had to get out of that gully and that part of the wild country soon or he was a gone goose.
Crept along on his elbows and one good knee.
Like any four-legged creature.
Leg dragging.
Felt his strength leaving him.
Every breath he took was like a razor.
Trees and rocks about him seemed shadowy and dim.
No longer feel his hands.
Had escaped too completely from men. Nature would kill him now.
Long to let go, drift free of things.
Last stubbornness to live.
Ridge about forty foot high.
Shivering and sweating and soaked with rain he came up over the edge.
Little farmhouse stood near a creek.
Half hidden in the trees.
Crawl toward it.
Through the bushes, down the knoll.
House was dark.
Called cooee but it were long abandoned.
Raised the latch. The door yielded to the pressure.
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Cobwebs stringy with dirt.
Rude table — a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner.
Narrow iron bedstead.
Lay down on the bed with my coat.
Tattered blanket.
Taste of fever in his mouth.
Slept unquiet.
Saw faces, heard voices.
Thought the country was saying something to him.
Wind was trying to whisper something to me and I couldn’t make out what it was.
Something else like the faint fall of soft bare feet.
Looked up to see a little boy.
Face amongst the leaves on the level with my own looking at me very fierce and steady.
Sense he wanted to tell me something.
Woke with a sudden start.
Violent pains in my head and feaverish.
Not strength to stand up or to get myself any water to drink.
Realised that the footsteps were nothing but the sound of my own heart.
Evening he was delirious again.
Night was moving now. He tried not to look at it, but it was true — the night moved in waves, fluttering.
Idea his body wasn’t his.
Observer of this man who lies here.
Woke up in a sweat.
Aching and trembling in every limb.
In and out of lucidity.
Unaccountably I think about a girl I talked to once.
Touched me on my left shoulder.
Attic room.
Hips were so narrow.
Perching at the sleeper’s bedside.
Don’t live nowheres no more, she said.
Little hand on my shoulder as she spoke those words.
Thought that she was crying.
Woke in the cold dark, coughing.
Wind had dropped, not a leaf stirred; and the silence was total, broken only at intervals by a rustle of wings or the sad cry of some distant nocturnal bird.
Stalks of light poked through.
Thirst. Great thirst.
Felt of his leg carefully, finger tips probing.
Swollen almost twice its size.
Got up on his good leg and slowly shifted his weight.
Bad leg hurt but it bore up.
Pulled the door open.
Little stream.
Bent over like a squirrel.
Drank from it with the hollow of his hand.
Water was the only medicine he had and he put faith in it.
Face toward the house again.
Good strong sleep.
Living life returned.
Swaying on my gimpy leg.
Opened a few windows and shutters.
Debris of leaves and pine needles, webs, cocoons and insect corpses.
Foul smell drifted from his body.
Went back to the stream.
Wading out into the middle of it, bad leg and all, and gulped water and splashed his face.
Washed his hands and beard.
Sand for soap.
Soaked his calluses.
Stream were like a poultice.
Awoke stronger from each short slumber.
Lying under the open window with the sun in his face.
Tried to guess the date, c
ounting in silence, or rather groping over nights and days. His beard informed him better than his brain.
Time for me to leave.
Checked his bum leg.
Swelling was going down.
Face in a grey webby window.
Gaunt, brown.
Eyes half buried.
Shirt hung in tatters.
Shoes have a big hole like they laughing.
Opened the door and went out.
Down to the brook and began to climb along its course.
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Cows raised their muzzles out of the grass and regarded him.
Cars that passed gave him all the berth.
Man at the petrol station.
Wonder if you could tell me what day this is.
Gave me such an unreal look.
Bought milk.
Drinking it as I sat on a railing of the bridge.
Frail hopeful lunatic tipping the carton to quiet his stomach.
Road into town.
People passing in the street turned to look at him.
Rest on a bench in front of the church.
Drunk on milk.
Before entering an inn I hesitate outside.
Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness?
Innkeeper with his green apron.
Ask about spending the night and he studies me first from head to toe.
Twelve marks including breakfast.
Come into the parlour, sir.
Old low-roofed room with a great beam across the middle of the ceiling and benches with high backs to them.
Gave me some lemonade.
Dark bread, plentiful cheese and butter.
Coffee service with cups and cream pitcher and a sugar bowl.
Conducted to his chamber.
Hot bath.
Up to the elbows with red patches and sores.
So thin his teeth hurt.
Lay down and a dead sleep closed on him.
Sun was up so high when I waked.
Grateful for a day of rest.
Hearty meal.
Baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of potatoes.
Ate until he couldn’t any more.
Slept more.
Stars were coming out when I woke.
Nothing about but the wind and the silence.
Empty mind of sleep.
Day to day.
Recovering his strength.
Bought socks and underwear.
Hickory shirt.
Pair of understandin’s.
Treading it slowly.
Edge of the town.
Crossed the river just above the pool by some stepping stones.
On up the hillside.