by Henri Bosco
Flattering vision for our family, from which each Mégremut secretly draws deep pleasure, with angelic self-satisfaction. And I grew tender as I evoked it for myself at the approach of Christmas, that holiday which, more than any other, is for us the holiday of tenderness.
And yet, I knew I would be missing it. I knew it all too well, and it pained me. It pains me to disappoint anyone. But how to reply to them? For they had already written, I was sure of it, and I would receive this letter: “We’re counting on you, Martial.” A good letter, as good as bread . . .
Still, on December 23, nothing had yet arrived. The island was covered in snow, and Balandran, who went to the land daily to tend the flock, reported that the river was rough and hard to cross.
On December 24, the sky darkened and it began to snow in the early morning. Except for a lull around eleven, this snow continued without a break until evening. During the lull, I went out for a walk. The snow crunched, and there was nothing better than sinking my foot into those sparkling crystals. Not much wind, but in the air a scent of roses, and on my cheeks the soft, large blossoms of snow, falling in light flurries.
Balandran had withdrawn into his hut, which was puffing energetically from the tip of its sugarloaf roof; every so often a spray of sparks shot up, twinkling through the snow.
I returned, and nothing had arrived. I was amazed not to have received a letter. This abnormal silence of the Mégremuts could not be ascribed to tardiness, even less to negligence. In such matters the Mégremuts are neither tardy nor negligent. Should I suspect that someone had kept the letter back? No, for Dromiols, in keeping it back, would have acted against himself. At least that was what common sense told me.
I was a little annoyed, but even more, I was tormented by a vague, ill-defined pain. If the Mégremuts were silent, was this not a sign of their reproach, their sorrow? Usually, the Mégremuts have no trouble expressing their reproach, and their sorrow makes free use of speech, even laments. We are not given to unvoiced sorrow or silent reproach. Faces and gestures speak; voices confirm. In this gentle family we love each other too much not to confess everything, especially the reproaches, the sorrow, the deep roots of tenderness. “Qui se tait se tue,” good Aunt Philomène likes to say. “Whoever stills himself kills himself,” and she has a point. But now the Mégremuts were still. A hundred miles from here, the Mégremuts with heavy hearts had shut themselves up in their grief, leaving me alone without reproach, face to face with myself—I who possesses, alas, a Mégremut heart!—on the very eve of Christmas. And so their distant sorrow spread through me, over this snowy island where, unhappy and alone, I thought of them and missed them.
For I missed them.
Yet I did not see how I could be anywhere other than at La Redousse on Christmas day. Why? I could not have said. But one thing was clear. I was alone and that did not pain me. Or rather, if I felt any sorrow, it was only in imagining my family’s suffering, my family that is so sensitive. And, in placing myself back among them, I ceased to be alone. But my solitude itself did not make my heart ache. It gave it a strange life.
Ever since my arrival at La Redousse I had lived alone. Dromiols had spent only one day on the island. Balandran kept himself apart; his brief appearances, far from relieving my solitude, only intensified its austere rigor. I had suffered this rigor; it had weighed on me.
But my new solitude did not weigh on me; it unburdened me. I had made a break. I did not see clearly yet what this break meant, as I was possessed by a poorly defined yet powerful feeling that both thrilled me and filled me with fear—the feeling of being cut off, free perhaps (although that was less certain). Cut off from the family I loved, and already following the thread of this mysterious river that flowed within me and whose existence I had always overlooked, suddenly revealed through the sound of its current and the sight, as yet confused, of its banks. Huge dark waters were coursing through me, and this thought haunted me so dramatically that, toward five, despite the snow, I left the house to go and see the river.
• • •
I took a direct path. Not even two hundred yards down, I found the bank.
The river had just started to enter night, a night flowing over snow. Between totally white banks, where here and there black holes opened—mysterious dead branches, backwaters, marshes—a long live beast silently slithered beneath showers of flakes that deadened the water’s murmur. At times the snow poured down so profusely that the river vanished beneath the endless, swarming streams, untouched by a single breeze. The air was calm, and soundless waves of snow crossed the empty sky like thousands of birds in flight. Sky, water, shorelines, island—everything merged into one elusive substance. And I too merged with it until I lost all sense both of the place enshrouded in dissolving whiteness and of the shapes erased by the dizzying, ongoing avalanches. I was alive, yes, but in another space, at once confined and infinite. All dimensions destroyed, nothing but movement as the whole expanse became a fleeting mirage dispelled by the slightest breath. I felt as if the smallest gesture could suddenly and effortlessly rend the filmy body of this imponderable world where I was suspended, weightless, in a vast void. The cosmic being was floating there, along with the void itself, imaginary nothingness invented for the light world of snow that weighed no more than a thought, my most recent dream. Futile and free, cut off from everything and almost from myself, I wandered through the unreal air of a space created by and then destroyed by the scattering snow. Not one sensation bound me to life save this fragile phantasmagoria, and even the night’s cold did not chill me. I was no longer anything but a wave, a human wave pulsing with the passing snow, becoming snow, fluttering . . . I do not know how, in this state of unearthly lightness I took a step, but suddenly I saw, beneath the snow bank, the wild water. No more than two feet away, black, fast, poised to devour me.
I clung to a branch; the ground gave way, and I had trouble holding myself back. I succeeded only through a desperate effort. I leaned against a tree—a huge, frozen tree encrusted in snow. A shiver gripped me below my arms and along my sides, enveloping my chest. I was cold. Whenever a breeze lifted the aerial veil of snow, the whole river, a powerful rush of darkness, suddenly appeared. It was a living creature, I no longer had any doubt. A forbidding creature. Beneath the futile flight of ephemeral flakes, it flowed from its source to the sea in one stream, heavy and dark; and although black, it gleamed with menace. Its ravenous mouth was glued to the ooze of its banks. Digging slime from its damp bed, dragging beneath its lithe belly the sand, the stones, the plants, the dead: it was draining the earth. Not one sound rose from it. Secretly, beneath this dazzling shower, it was sapping the soil’s viscous roots. It had a will that made me stiff with fear. And it was reaching me. Pure will, mindless, indifferent—the will of an ancient element, engaged for centuries in a long labor of abrasion, secret soaking, and the slow erosion of the world; fluid yet decomposing force that attacked not only the banks of the river but ate as well into the shores of the soul.
And these shores—I felt them melting. In an unconscious collapse of my being, I was sinking, despite my horror, into a softened, moving soil that liquefied, layer upon soluble layer, until it dissolved into the waters of that mysterious internal river whose black stream coursed through me in tandem with the earth’s nighttime flow.
I had the strength to tear myself away from this danger, and I fled. I had no goal. Something drove me from the river to escape the terror. For I feared danger less than my own dread. The thought of death did not panic me. Death meant no more to me than life. It was an empty word. But the river’s dank smell, the touch of this black, wet, icy water, made me rigid with fear. It was a naked fear, an elemental terror, on my skin, in my flesh, my blood, my heart, my trembling marrow—that secret dread of water that had always haunted me and that now drove me to flee. Blind flight that carried me, not toward La Redousse, but to the edge of an unknown clearing, perhaps on the southern end of the island.
It was still snowing.
Nothing to orient myself. The snow was already knee-deep in the hollow of the clearing. Still, I ventured in; for across from me, a path broke through the wall of trees. I struggled to reach it. Icy, narrow, with low branches arching overhead, it wound, more like a corridor than a path. I was able to walk on it for awhile, but it closed in more and more and I had to retrace my steps. It was then that I lost my bearings; to search was useless—the clearing had disappeared. I was gripped with fear. “The island is not large,” I told myself. “This path must lead somewhere.” I grew stubborn. But I could only guide myself by the brightness of the snow that here and there blurred the path . . .
I lost it several times, then found it again, by chance; or at least I thought I recognized its trace. But was this the trace? And where was I going? Suddenly, through an opening, I saw the river. Black, fast, deep, almost at my feet. I recoiled in horror and fled by guesswork, turning my back to the shore. I felt as if I were moving northward toward the island’s center. I crossed isolated copses in flat terrain. Blending one into another, barely formed paths lured me, led me astray, then abandoned me. And so I took a few steps to the right, to the left; I hesitated, I searched for direction. What direction? I no longer knew. In this blurred universe, aimlessly spinning, could there be a goal? Through the falling flakes of snow, the memory of the house was vanishing; so much whiteness whirled through my head that my mind became little more than a faint warmth. A vague longing persisted there. I followed it, moving forward blindly, more just to walk than to reach any goal. Not one reference point. I walked in circles. Yet I saw the river again. As soon as I sought a direction and thought to take it, I inevitably came upon the river. Always black, gleaming, icy. It slithered. And still I fled. I went elsewhere, but never arrived. No longer any space, only time. It seemed long. Meanwhile, I felt as if time was born from my walking. Each step created it. If I were to stop, I told myself, time would end. So I had to stop, anywhere. That became my goal—to stop, to find some place that would force me to suspend this vain walk through the snow. Strange thought. It possessed me so much that I quickened my steps to arrive sooner at this illusory, elusive place of rest within time. The ever-present shape-shifting seemed to make a pause—even an imagined one—impossible, and little by little I could no longer imagine it. A pause was nothing more than a mental construct, an abstraction. I tried to chase it from me, but it is hard to chase away a disembodied form. Only another thought could perhaps abolish it, but there were no other thoughts. At such moments there is only one thought, the very one we seek to destroy, which possesses us. It possessed me. It was an enthrallment. It created a kind of hole, which gradually grew larger as it emptied my skull, where my mind floated, faint, like an air bubble ready to silently burst. I followed this fragile bubble with my eyes, within myself, and I stepped forward blindly, randomly, through woods, clearings, shapes, paths, places I no longer saw, for I was completely inside myself, and that self was nothing but a hollow skull where an imperceptible bit of phosphorous flitted about, ready to evanesce . . . What was my body doing? Left to its animal instinct, it must have walked on its own, exploring paths, wandering through this strange landscape that had become invisible to it, while within me silence moved through my soundless void like a rain of snow, and I merged the silence with the snow. For I needed both snow and silence. I was entering a mute world, where you walked on cats’ feet, where sounds were hushed and even the faintest noises gently died. You scarcely whispered, and soon your feeble lips themselves vanished into the snow. The last breath faded into nothingness, and I entered true silence. It was a palpable silence, no doubt the one that vibrates under the lowest sounds—the trembling of the ether on the distant, deep chords of the universe. In one vast wave, it was arriving in an immense solitude, and it was moving toward other solitudes. Wave followed upon wave, solitude upon solitude. Sometimes, as if several chords could form an inaudible song, silence emerged from silence, a silence softer than silence, or lower, or higher. And when the low slipped under the high, the superimposed songs of these hidden waves summoned, with great harmonies, the five other songs of silence, and all the snow scattered into stars . . .
At the same time I was moving forward within myself, and the now invisible outside world was being replaced by another world that I was perceiving. It seemed to emanate from within me, to be built there and to be recomposing, with the realities that had become inaccessible to me, an interior double of everything the snow’s vertigo had obscured.
And from the ghostly snow falling now within me—just as around me the real snow was falling—a landscape began to form, made up of great crystalline woods with brittle treetops, fragile bushes and blue-tinged thickets, glass paths that shone on an island of pure snow. Obscure phantom, I crossed icy clearings from which came paths that led nowhere. I wandered through this mental island as much as on the real island, but slowly, as you must in a land of snow and silence. For these delicate structures could not have formed and could not be preserved except through silence. They were so miraculous and yet so fragile that at each instant I feared they might be destroyed by a simple sound. I knew I was wandering through this imaginary world (but was it imaginary?) in search of refuge. There was a house, I no longer knew where, where people were waiting for me. And they were worried I had not returned. “If only,” I said to myself in my dream, “they do not think of the bell.” This bell haunted me. Who had told me, “Above all, don’t use it?” I had forgotten. A little man, a sprite perhaps . . . But what did it matter now? At its first peal, I thought, this crystal structure would collapse and I would fall back into that real snow where I had been lost and from which the return path had forever fled . . . But here, in this improbable inward region, the return path will form itself. I can no longer find it. I know you never find anything. I want to create it as I walk, and if I do not see clearly where I am going in this delirium, I can sense what I love and where my desire leads . . . But the silence was so pure I could not say it, nor even think it, not even to myself, deep within . . . As I moved forward, new shapes, more and more transparent, were born within me. The world was being purified. Sometimes a huge snow bird flew up from a snow tree; it vanished, causing myriads of delicate crystal leaves to quiver beneath its flight. The fictive, fragile forest trembled, and in an opening the marvelous bird slowly shook the white feathers of its wings as it rose upward toward an immobile constellation. For gradually the sky was clearing, and the first streams of stars were beginning to fall to earth, like a sparkling river that bubbled brightly as it moved toward me from the springs of a distant life. I hurried, anxious to reach the house. “Oh,” I told myself, “I must find shelter before this river’s current touches me and carries me across the abyss of the sky . . .” The more I quickened my steps, the more the love of refuge warmed my heart. I was moving within myself, straight ahead, without hesitation, in a world ever purer and more ethereal. I was sure I had found the true path and that I was walking for my salvation toward the simplest house in the world, the dwelling of peace . . . The first currents of the river touched the tips of the island and coursed over the snow, flooding the last paths where I might have been lost. And already I was walking freely among the stars.
•
How did I find myself back at La Redousse? I will never know. I have, however, forgotten nothing of my path through the night and my hallucination. But how to explain that I was mentally lost on account of a little snow? And how, blinded by that snow and by this delirium, was I able to return to the house?
When I try to remember, it seems that at some point I heard a muffled, disembodied voice speaking above the snow, a voice uttering senseless words of snow, which somehow I understood. Between the anterior silence where the waves were beginning to mingle and fade, and the concrete sounds of the living world, this voice expressed not a precise thought, but a sort of distant desire, a call or plea. It heralded the departure of silence and the arrival of souls. Whispering and impossible to
place, it was trying, before my return to reality, to share a mysterious secret. Between me and the door of my ancestors, it was begging me to hear what soon I would be unable to grasp, and which nevertheless I needed to hear before returning to my mortal flesh. In vain I sought the name it did not know how to tell me, which I had once heard, whose lost syllables had left mere traces of their gentle tones . . . They were enough, however, to touch my heart, to open my mind . . . I was being asked to make a promise, with no specification of what promise. But for me, could there be two promises? Only one was possible, and I made it.
And so the voice sank into the wave that created this ineffable thought, and I was pushing a door of snow; and suddenly I found myself, stunned by the shock, staggering but still standing, in the main room of La Redousse.
It was warm, maternal. The hearth, peaceful and steady, burned before me; and on the carefully laid table, the old Malicroix candelabra was holding up its seven silver branches, crowned by the seven flames of my lineage, unmoving, pointing skyward.
• • •
No one was in the room. The air, expanded by the heat, was filling all the chinks in the house, pressing against the walls, the floor, the low ceiling, the heavy furniture. Life was circulating here, from the fire to the closed doors and from the doors to the fire, tracing invisible rings of warmth that caressed my face. Carried on the air, the scent of ashes and wood made this life even more palpable. The slightest gleams from the fire quivered as they faintly colored the plaster walls. A gentle hum rose from the working hearth, as a light thread of steam wafted upward. All of this came together to form a warm body whose penetrating sweetness welcomed me to friendship and rest.