Perhaps he knows about something and is afraid of it, but must see it, must find it. And find it alone. He walks like one who is very much alone.
A delicate trickling meets his ear as he rounds a bend. He starts in surprise at first, but there is no cause for alarm, it is water, trickling right out of the rock and down into a mossgrown horse trough hewn out of stone.
A memento of time past. The water still trickles out of the stone, from a vein that never dries up, still cold in the extreme heat. A welcome sight. The man looks round him before bending down to drink. In the trough he encounters his own face and avoids looking at it, drinking the refreshing mountain water quickly and walking on.
He looks with the same suspense as before at everything along the roadside. There is not much to see. He walks like a tired, frightened boy, but with the bird’s heart, which he cannot help having.
Bend after bend.
The sun strikes his back. Utter stillness. The scraping of his footsteps in the gravel the only sound.
And then he is there.
The bends have become sharper. In his suspense he has not noticed.
*
Sharper—so that he comes on the thing all of a sudden. It is the loop. The dead noose hanging from the crevice. Right in front of him all of a sudden. Twice the height of a man up the rock wall. It resembles a tree-root that has looped itself unexpectedly in the air, and then turned and crawled in again.
The young man looks at it. It does not seem important hanging there. A loop like that hanging without reason, in burning sun. But he does not move a muscle, so fascinated is he. Unable to take his eyes off it.
He knew about it all the time. Here it is, and now matters must take their course.
Something is happening, unseen. And there is no name for it. An encounter between the young man and this object in the rock that looks like a loop. An encounter between what he possesses himself and what has been biding its time here, and is ready to meet him now.
He stands still as they meet.
No, they are not meeting yet, they have not come so far. This is only an initiation, an opening.
He receives images of things he did not know about, and hints of things over which he has no control, being uncertain about their limits.
The bird in him brings this about perhaps, though it does not seem to have much to do with birds.
The loop does not move and the young man stands stock-still in front of it. He must be thinking, startled: So it was this.
But that it should be like this?
And that it must be like this?
I don’t think I will.
He thinks this in the small space he has left to move in. The two that are to meet in him are beginning to fill it up.
He looks at the loop a little longer, and then he says: I will.
He only says it for the sake of saying it. He knows there is only one thing to do: He must do it.
Should he go over and press his forehead against it? Is that all that must be done?
No, no, he thinks.
But he will. He thinks: That it should be like this!
I can’t, he thinks.
He has to think all this for the sake of appearances. The moment he saw the loop hanging there he knew what he had to do. It is futile to pretend to push it aside. In a while he is ready. He will and he can scramble up and take hold of the loop. He will soon find out what happens afterwards.
I shan’t get up there, the rock is smooth.
He knows very well that he will get up. This is fate—and he is the helpless heart of a bird that has let itself be lured.
Smooth rock. Impossible to get up there without special equipment. No sooner has he thought this than he looks more carefully, and sees good handholds and footholds in the twelve feet he needs. Does he know what he is nearing? No way round it.
No way round—had he thought there was? Something in him wants to run away.
No, he says sharply.
It’s too late anyway. He is really hanging already on the rock wall like a fly.
The loop still hangs motionless above his head. He is half-way up to it, and it is no problem to climb the rest of the way, but still he pauses. As if to show that he can do that.
That I can make some decisions myself.
Then he crawls the last short stretch, using the safe footholds. Then his bare forehead is on a level with the loop.
Ugh, with my forehead.
Why not?
Precisely with my forehead.
With his hands he clings to the rock. His hands are trembling. The brown, or brownish-black, loop is just in front of his eyes. Then he does it: he touches the loop cautiously with his forehead.
The loop gives a tiny jerk.
Then there is nothing more, then the loop seems dead again.
It almost makes him fall from the cleft he is standing in. Fire runs through him. The first. There will be no more. He seizes the edge of a crevice and saves himself.
If he had expected something cold it had turned out otherwise. The loop was as mild as the air it hung in, warmed by the sun like everything else. But it was not a dead thing. Against his forehead he had felt the tiny, sudden jerk of life. What kind of life?
In a flash there was a meeting. The two that met in him have settled side by side and have started to bum.
He cannot move a finger. He is here now. Before him hangs the loop. Should he grasp it, since it was made to be grasped? No no. He is tempted to do so, to let go with his right hand and clutch at the thick loop. No no.
A cautious grip would be impossible, he is so dazed. A clutch. What would happen?
Impossible to tell, but what has happened would be destroyed. Why don’t you get away?
I can’t.
Neither of them move. Nothing seems to be happening. Things did happen in a flash before they began burning. From the one to the other and back again.
The loop does not begin to glide, does not haul itself up or down, there is no more to be seen of it than is there already. There is no one here who can look into the young man’s eyes to see if they are dead. If that’s what has happened. He has not moved a muscle. Is he going to stand here forever, like the other? Does he no longer exist?
Minutes pass perhaps. No one is counting them. Everything has turned to stone.
Dead? Oh no. Rushing rivers move towards the unknown. One understands it, one knows it, even when turned to stone. Towards the unknown. Rivers. If he should become anything after this, he will never be the same as before.
He relaxes his muscles at last. His body loses the tension that was turning him to stone. He opens his mouth, but checks what he was about to say. His fingers, itching with the desire to grasp the rope, fumble for crevices to bear him during the climb down. His hands change handholds, his feet change clefts for standing in. Then there are no clefts, and he slides down the last little stub of smooth rock to the road.
Above him hangs the loop as before. No difference in colour or shape.
*
The fire is raging in the young man. A fire in the depths. And experiences have passed through him like dark logs on the rivers. They are still doing so.
He is back on the old, neglected road in front of the rock with the loop. He makes no attempt to look up at it. Shrinking from it, he walks instead across the road, out to the edge above the giddy precipice. There is a blue haze downwards and outwards. Far below he can see a cluster of human dwellings on the bank of a foaming river. He is looking straight down at the roofs of the houses. He sees cars speeding along the highway like small beetles. He sees people walking without moving from the spot, tiny as ants.
He looks at it thirstily. He is thirsty for it at this moment. He has become so now. At this moment, now that something seems to have been moved out of the way. When the thought passed through him that the way ahead was open.
The rivers passed into the unknown. He knows no more than that. He has found no certainty. He stands at the outermost edge o
f the road, where the warm gusts of heavy valley air dance towards him from the slopes below.
Standing and standing. It is a different person standing here. Different in a flash. Different because of things one refuses to think about. Fire in the depths.
There had been fire before. That was what had driven him upwards, that had brought about the encounter. Fire met fire. Then the way became open. It cannot be explained, it’s a riddle, but the way is somehow open in this daze.
Burnt and free, is that what he is? He stands looking down into the valley at the others. There they are, side by side. At his wit’s end he stands looking down at them. On fire. The way open.
What is this open way buzzing around him? He cannot shout about it to the people down there, if he does go back to them in a while. The things he must say are spoken silently to himself for lack of courage.
He was driven into this, afraid, but going straight towards it. Now he suddenly feels lonely.
Side by side—does it mean that I can never experience that any more after this?
Was that what burnt up?
*
The hot rock stands, housing and hushing up secrets, the things a young person feels in himself and longs for. He who rushes away, burnt and giddy, has nothing to tell. We met and caught fire—such things cannot be told, for fear of ridicule.
It is his fire, but he has become lonely. He did not know this. Lonely in an instant maybe.
There are the shadows and the ascents and the rock crevices and the hiding places. And what one does not name. There are the graves too, for the things no one knows, when what can happen up in the mountain is already accomplished. He who stands thus does not shout about these things; he must not after the fire in the depths. Perhaps he may some time, but not now. He stands repeating to himself with trembling voice: Met and caught fire.
What did meet is hidden from the man who stands here trembling.
*
Side by side.
One must be side by side.
Certainly not in order to talk about it. Absolutely nothing must be told. But to avoid the loneliness after the fire.
What was that about the open way? Was it a moment of fantasy?
The winds from the valley rise in gusts against his face, from the dells, from the banks, from the knolls below. Beneath flows the river in bright waterfalls at night, while people pass into the night and think no more. He stands up on the road, looking down. Do they remember how quickly it can change? The next morning the snow of death may be lying on the peaks.
Suddenly he looks thirstily for people. They are moving about below. He must go down.
What will happen then?
Happen? he asks himself, afraid.
After a while he has recovered sufficiently from the strain to begin the walk downhill. He soon feels better. Better the further down he goes.
Soon he will be walking alongside the river. The river flows quite fast down the steep valley, but without much volume at this time of year. Up at the bend in the road he played with the idea of the shining river flowing through the summer night. He only did it for pleasure and because he needed to. No waterfall can shine now.
Down to people now.
What will happen?
*
A sultry summer’s day. He has come down to the highway and there are people on both sides of it. Most of them are busy in the fields and do not notice him as he passes by. A stream of people are speeding past in their cars. He looks for someone who is not busy, and catches sight of a figure sitting in the grass in a garden a short distance from the road. Without hesitation he turns off the road and goes straight towards her. It is a young girl sitting in the hot sunshine.
A girl, of course.
He does not know her very well, but is aware of who she is. He has talked to her casually once or twice.
She sits in the grass, attractive in a thin summer dress, her healthy skin glowing through it. She gets to her feet before he reaches her. Why does she do that? Is she afraid of him?
He sees she is uneasy.
‘Good day.’
‘Good day?’ she replies, clearly in the form of a question.
‘No, it was nothing,’ he says quickly, and stops short.
‘No, of course not. Why should there be anything?’ she says. But she has begun to look at him.
Look at him? Yes, look at him. He is uneasy himself, and notices it.
He says quickly, ‘I saw you were sitting in the grass. Is anything the matter?’
‘Surely I’m the one who ought to ask that,’ she answers his eyes, but she does not sound as if she is repulsing him.
‘Am I intruding?’
‘Why should I think that?’ she asks his eyes. ‘You must have some errand here.’
Has he an errand? He has an errand that makes him tremble. What can she read in him? She asks abruptly, as if it dropped out of her mouth: ‘What is it?’
‘No,’ he says, cutting it off.
In a little while he says: ‘There’s something else I’d like to say.’
‘Oh?’ she says to his eyes.
‘That I like you.’
‘No.’
She is blushing.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he says.
She is silent to his eyes.
‘You don’t mean it, do you?’ he says.
‘Run away, then,’ he says, trembling in case she takes him seriously. He looks at her forehead, he sees only her forehead that is free and beautiful.
She does not run away. He understands that she has no intention of running away. He stares at her forehead as if parched with thirst.
‘You’re the first person I’ve met,’ he tells her. It sounds stupid to anyone who has not been with him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Never mind. Don’t you want to sit down again?’
She does not take her eyes off him. She says: ‘I’ll stand as long as you’re standing.’
He gives a start. But he does not say: All right, I’ll sit down then. He stands looking at her forehead. One of them must have taken a step forward, for they are close to each other. He is aware of the fragrance rising from her dress. I am among people, I am among people, he thinks.
He sees she wants to come closer. She has no idea what has been happening.
‘May I ask you something?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know,’ she answers his eyes.
‘I suppose you can tell me what it is,’ she says again. Her eyes have changed. They keep changing.
‘Your forehead,’ he says, stupidly.
‘What do you mean, my forehead? You’re so strange today. I’ve never seen you like this before.’
He nods.
Her forehead is just in front of him. He puts his arms round her shoulders. There are only a couple of narrow straps across them. He tilts her head towards him slightly so that her forehead is projecting. Numb with tension he places his own forehead gently against hers.
She flinches as if he were burning hot.
‘Ouch, let go!’
Disappointment engulfs him like an avalanche. It had not freed him; it had not gone away. But the other: dark logs and rivers swirling away into the unknown.
‘What did you say?’ he asks afraid. She does not answer.
He has already released her. His arms are hanging down. His eyes are staring at her in fright.
‘Go on, run,’ he says.
She does not run. She takes a step backwards, and stays there—in a silence that is difficult to bear. She does not take her eyes off him.
She tells him: ‘I didn’t mean it.’
She takes two steps forward, straight towards him. Her eyes are blurred and heavy.
‘My dear,’ she says.
A dark roaring towards the unknown. Logs and rivers ...
‘What is it?’
‘I want to kiss you,’ she says with open mouth.
He says indistinctly, in the frightening unknown: ‘You don’t know what y
ou’re kissing.’
‘I want to kiss you just the same.’
9
Words, Words
He thought of everything that might have happened, but never came so far.
Because it was stopped by someone who was on guard when matters became really serious, by a warning that was always trustworthy.
So one did not fall into the traps; one could return to one’s own place.
A clear eye that understood what was important. That could calmly allow this to happen and that to happen, but put a stop to such activity when there was real danger.
This has been recorded on a tablet.
One can bring out one’s tablet now and then. There all that should have been said through the time of silence is written down. A time which was also the time of long comradeship.
*
Now, this was one consideration. And a basic one. But there were others.
He could sit and think like this: What about the candid generosity that put him in his place when something or other had been done too meanly? How could he react in such a situation?
Feel ashamed and turn aside. Keep away for a while in anger. Take offence.
Keep away, and give unjust anger and offended looks time, in order to let them fade finally in bitter acknowledgement of the truth. Come out again after a while, incapable of saying anything, only passing slowly by and perhaps pausing for a little, standing there for a little.
She would have understood.
No one mentioned the matter. One’s tongue was useless just then.
Words can cause trouble like large rocks in one’s path.
Wrong: Words can clear the largest rocks out of the way.
Wrong again: Words can turn into dark chasms unbridgeable for a whole lifetime.
We know very little about the power and the destructiveness of words.
*
It’s as if there were nothing more—when one has brought out the tablet.
But what about the person who was always there when needed? Always willingly beside you? Important as bread is important and as indispensable.
He said to himself: Perhaps that’s what I must remember more often. But did I ever speak about what I really knew? Far too difficult. Far too extraordinary to be blurted out in words.
The Boat in the Evening Page 9