Nor did he remember everything. Too many years. And there was much that could not be brought out into the open. Certain matters are best left like that.
He thought: One says far too many stupid, awkward things. Most often they are awkward. The things one says usually seem to be left lying about on the floor like a pair of lop-sided shoes—while the things one wanted to say feel like birds in flight.
To keep silent about matters of importance is not just modesty. One’s wretched tongue is wooden. Small matters are chattered about, blurted out. One keeps silent about the rest until it is perhaps forgotten and lying in various graves.
What should he be called, then, he who is responsible for this?
*
As if there were nothing more.
He thought sometimes, to comfort himself: I have it. It has not gone. All this has been carved in vivid letters on that tablet.
Well, bring it out.
That tablet will never be brought out. It is a tablet no one may read, no one may see.
So it exists only in the imagination, I suppose.
It exists.
What’s the use, if it’s not meant for anyone.
It feels as if it’s some use to me, at any rate. And, as I said, the tablet is there.
As if there were nothing more than this. I could sit at supper remembering new things. They would appear from their graves all the same.
He thought and thought.
*
He thought: Words, words.
No more words now.
Here is my thirsting hand.
10
The Dream of Stone
Between the walls of stone—and there it is better to be alone, they tell you as you are let in to their dense, leaden dream.
I don’t understand. Stone walls, what business have I there? What have I to do between the stone walls?
The answer comes: That is a reasonable question.
Only afterwards does it dawn on you.
*
No further explanation of how you have arrived between these stone walls. These smooth rocks that stand so defiantly upright. Suddenly you are there, that is all you know.
Between smooth, sun-warmed stone walls, and between stone mouths that certainly exist, but are not visible.
You think of the mouths. Then you have entered.
The rock here is not cold. Accumulated sun. The walls are like the sides of an oven. The heat from the walls is like the gentle strokes of a club on the back of your neck. No one would come here of his own accord; I dare not find out why I am here myself.
But it’s the stone mouths.
If only the stone mouths would open and tell me what I am seeking. But the stone must return to its stone and is not likely to help me. There is really nothing besides burning walls of rock and astonishment.
Say something, mouth.
One stands stock-still in bewilderment at the sight: smooth, steep stone walls. Closed. Fathomlessly silent.
But one prays: Say something, mouth.
Not the slightest sign of an answer.
These are upright stone plateaux. Steep and gentle by turns. They lean over dangerously as well, you feel their proximity if you doze off. But no mouth.
For the third time: Say something, mouth.
I am sure there is a mouth deep in the stone, but the stone must return to its stone and cannot reveal itself. Do I see this? Where am I?
*
Where are my clothes?
Time does not exist: it rose up like vapour as one turned round and looked for it. I have stripped long ago in this scorching heat. I prayed three times: Speak! But no mouth is open. You become uneasy and expect violence. Then your own concerns are not enough.
Smooth rock facing south, and long periods of burning sun. The stone has absorbed it all and is breathing out again. Hot flagstones burn the soles of my feet. They are too hot to walk on when you are completely naked.
I believe that these great expanses of stone have echoing cries within them. The cries are silent within the walls. They thud on the back of one’s neck if one goes close. One thinks of all the rock walls one has ever seen. Sometimes they plunge steeply into lakes and seas, fissured from thousand-year-old bolts of lightning. Sometimes they plunge vertically down into the quagmires, and from there they will probably cry out one day with crushing horror about the time of the rock in the quagmires. It will certainly be terrible to hear.
It is already the time of bewilderment, so that one forgets oneself and says, believing it to be of use: Say something, mouth.
Oh no.
But one is standing here, caught in all this heat that has accumulated in these upright surfaces. A little fever murmurs somewhere in the seeker who has come and does not quite know how to start.
One may walk naked for the sake of love—a few words that come to mind because I am walking like this, but they are inappropriate here, in loneliness between scraped rocks. I am naked and do not understand. But it is good to walk beside these warm stone walls. I opened my eyes and was there. Walking with a little fever in an abode of stone.
Yet another abode of stone.
*
Will the sealed mouths explain the truth about these abodes of stone, or will they remain, here as elsewhere, silent?
Or shall I go on walking here until finally I walk into the stone and stand there as if sealed? A mouth without redemption. Then others will come, confused by the heat and the strokes of the club, and say something to each other as they are shut in, that I do not understand. Fever-hot smooth rock, what is happening to me and to others?
I stand inside the stone without a mouth, and the others have to leave. They asked their question and left.
Is there more?
No, there’s nothing to start on. One sees only oneself in the stone. There everything is sealed, yet one sees oneself in the stone exactly as created, and walks quickly past oneself with beating heart. The walls in the rock are smooth yet deeply troubled.
The stone closes up and is alive without a face. Is alive so that one trembles in there, and then the sides begin leaning forward and turn threatening.
Can nothing be said to one who has not yet been given a valid answer; who has been to many places and asked, and who has come back none the wiser?
It has grown late, silent stone mouths. And I do not mean late in time.
*
The rock that plunges vertically down into the quagmires, think of that Down into the dark depths of the quagmires. Down until it meets rock from the other side. There it must remain. A strange meeting. Moss grows on a small section of the rock up in the light of day.
Vertically down into the quagmires.
*
There!
Unexpectedly it starts to rain in the middle of this heat. A cloud has moved in during the past few minutes and begun to shade the sun. An eager cloud full of rain. From its outermost fringes it is already letting fall a few large, luke-warm drops. Towards the centre the cloud is threateningly blue.
And now there is a sudden change. The first drops fall like small explosions on the hot surface of the stone, followed at once by tremendous turmoil. The flung drops are unusually large, and they are given a special reception. They strike against the stone and are turned into specks of vapour which spread in the air into lazy puffs of pent-up desires. They rise from the hard surface as if from deep sleep. Lazy puffs of breath from the stone mouth.
The puffs come in quick succession as the drops splash and lick, as more surfaces and walls and flagstones are included and send out their fragrance and their smell and their stink. Whether one wants it or not, the breaths advance towards one, pressing forward from all kinds of hidden places and mingling together.
With pounding pulse one becomes a part of it.
The vapour blows in gusts against one’s body. One stands naked; this is for the naked and for nobody. It makes one giddy in an instant.
Breathing and smells from all sides. The strongest is
the smell that is so shut in, elemental and savage. My back feels chilled, but not from uneasiness; these are deep shudders of what I was longing for. The stone mouths must be open somewhere. This is a salutation from within the walls.
It seems important to move about and receive fresh salutations from the puffs of vapour; to find new pettiness, new ways of handling pettiness and stupidity, and what is larger, and what is too large.
The smell flows more densely, without becoming rank; it is muted and strange, like the dream, and like one’s use of something unfamiliar. As sleep is creative and renewing, so the senses are there to be sharpened—by standing naked, aware of the flaws in oneself. Aware of the abyss and ready to collapse, and nobody can say a truly comforting word about this, or explain it.
The stone has acquired life.
Quicker than it can be told, at breakneck speed, in a few angry seconds it all happens. But the stone mouths have not opened; the rain from outside has woken them. The walls are ready to be shattered by what is shut in. Life rages in the tensions contained in the spectacle before one’s eyes. One stands in the middle of it, naked as never before, aware of the rock leaning over, threatening with closed mouth.
One stands there, imagining that the stone is ready to crack open because it is alive. The stone’s breath bewitches a man so that he sees stone surfaces rise up and remain standing as walls and tilting towers.
*
Do we really see it?
Yes, when we want to see it.
What is the truth about our senses? Do we sense so much as a thousandth part?
One tries to take part in everything as much as possible, in order to come closer. The scattered raindrops lick the stone and sustain its agitation, and my own agitation comes from being able to stand in the middle of this—to feel them mingling and becoming twice as strong. One can sense it without being annihilated oneself. All the same it passes from the one to the other and turns into some kind of silent avowal, powerful and threatening because it cannot be grasped.
No sooner is this established than I realize I have eyes in the back of my neck: I can see simultaneously in all directions in the bewitching vapour. Is it because I cannot bear to admit that my strength is borrowed? Because of it I have eyes in the back of my neck. I see the rock rise upwards like towers with battlements wreathed in green, some upright, others leaning and ready to fall. And they begin to move, nodding their crowns of rock like treetops on a stormy ridge. This I see with the back of my neck.
Something must come of this, and it turns out to be a melody. A chorus. The deepest notes in a chorus. But no dirge. We do not talk about going away. We do not talk at all, we are sonorous and towering choruses.
At once I feel that I am one with them. The smooth side is now outside me. I am not astonished, it is exactly as it should be. This is where one must enter and join in the chorus. Man belongs to the choir, but enters through his own perplexity.
*
Our great choir moves outwards.
The senses simultaneously acute and numb. The song that is outside man. Tremendous, and soundless. Rocks that rise on end, and are given breath and the faculty of song for the small space of time when they are allowed to take part. I myself am given the faculty of song and can take part in the chorus. It will never happen again. Perhaps it is a warning, but one does not think about that. It is important to take part until the breaking point.
As if hewn into the stone it is also laid down that this must soon rupture and disintegrate.
*
In chorus we sing of the stone. Of the rock in the quagmire. Of endless, mute aeons. Of the unfailing strength of the rock, which is on the point of erupting all the time. We sing of the waiting of the rock, and again of endless aeons. I raise my voice with them, and sing of man’s brief and pitiful confusion, of man’s pitiful life. The rock takes part too, singing sonorously the song of sorrow about man’s brief span.
*
No—one is forced to think mutely from within the mighty choir—it is not quite true about man’s pitiful life. Man’s life is not always pitiful. It can be as manifold as the glitter in a waterfall. It is the song of the rock that leads one astray.
The choir takes no notice of such matters. Rocks that have risen up and flexed themselves into towers merely proceed. A choir of mountain sides. We sing on, we sing of those which lean to the dangerous side, yet stand. Stand leaning and collecting shadows. We include rocks we have never seen. We include everything about rock and stone and quagmires, and yet it feels as if we are thin membranes, ready to rupture. We sing of each other. We sing of great mouths in stone.
*
This unimaginable choir of stone mouths and battlements—can it hold out?
Don’t think. A choir like this does not think.
One gives oneself up to it as if prompted by deep desire, letting the song of the rock become one’s own, whether there is sense in it or not. One takes part while there is still time, while everything is dizzily precious and time is short.
Don’t think. The tops of the towers each have their own wind, they are bent each in its own path, crisscrossing like scissors. One knows one does not see it, yet sees it. One is naked and one is nothing, but may take part in the chorus, while the rock opens its heavy stone chambers.
As I sing I nervously expect the song to die away after a while. The old wish: Say something, mouth, has been granted a jarring fulfilment.
But it is the hour.
No no.
It is the hour. It suddenly grows dark as if a wall were falling.
Straight above.
Transfixed, I watch the battlements. Cracked asunder at the summit. Liberated. An avalanche is falling from the liberated summit.
No, it is no falling wall, it is the twilight from the dark cloud which is sinking slowly downwards. The twilight that came with the sudden downpour. Now it is moving in. A cloud hanging low with rain from the summits of rock.
Moving in.
Chorus and wildness. Seconds and swaying slopes. The tension. The burning walls of rock. Nothing. Then the downpour came, cooling and quenching.
The bold spectacle may not be driven further. Unbroken threads of water are already striking with their wet, deliberate force. What dwelt in the rock will be driven inwards. The rain pours down the smooth walls, cooling, quenching and flowing. The chorus is silent, as all stone is silent.
The tumult of the scissoring battlements is over. There is only one leaning wall here—and under it stands a man, naked and alone, shivering in the rain, awakened yet again.
No use listening for choirs in the tops of the towers when it is pouring like this.
Wet is wet, and the smell of wet. No seducing vapour. Naked in the rain and the wet. The stone has returned to its stone.
11
The Heart Lies Naked beside the Highway in the Dark
The moon has reached its narrowest phase; its light is no longer of use. Thick darkness surrounds the house. A long dark evening will stride ahead—stride into an even thicker pall. Downwards and downwards, thicker and thicker.
If there is a heart here, it is lonely. The heart grows lonely; that is how it was created. It grows finally into its true self.
Lonely. It is far to its neighbour, and there it is a stranger. So it has even further to go.
The house grows lonely too. Its daytime character is of no importance now. Now there are other laws and other highways, other waterways. If there were lighted window panes within reach up to today, this is no longer true. The lighted panes have vanished and are of no consequence.
Is there no order here?
Increasingly so.
Where light gleamed, and then was extinguished, there everything was in order. The panes vanished and the eyelids closed peacefully. Quiet ticking, and then sleep. Lamp after lamp now signify sleep upon sleep. Order reigns according to its own rules.
But a lonely heart is not safe in the house. It has only itself, perhaps not even that. In the approachin
g night this cannot be counted on.
Do we not own our hearts in the end?
We know very little about it. That is one of the many uncertainties in life.
Tonight nothing is certain. That is why you have not shut your eyes.
I must have certainty.
The reply comes: Can’t you see that your heart is lying naked on the highway, exhibiting itself there of its own accord? You know it well, but you try to hide your knowledge.
Since one is a little tired one has to answer: It is true.
It is true that my heart lies naked on or beside the highway when it is dark. It is not the first evening it has happened. It is waiting for someone. It goes out and lies down at the roadside, trembling with boldness. At night it can do things like that. Nobody else is embarrassed by it and nobody will feel he has to ask questions.
In the darkness when everything is unknown.
How it will end is the tension of each night. There is no way of stopping this.
In the daytime this is the crossroads of the world. At night the thoroughfares are innumerable; they are nothing and everything. It is no use thinking that the four thoroughfares start here, as if one lay at the dead centre of the highways, at the point of departure. No, I have halted here and bared my heart because I could come no further. I was really in the house all the time.
Naked beside the unknown road at night.
Why naked? Why that word exactly?
Because it feels like that. Clothes are not very important in the dark.
Defenceless?
That too. The feeling, at any rate.
But with a blind need to be there. To face what is coming towards me along the road. And stand defenceless just when one should defend oneself. Is that logical?
Nobody has said that one can defend oneself. One is simply naked in the darkness. One has to take that risk, to lie stripped beside the highway where the traffic is heavy.
The highway goes straight forward through the darkness, but it is no use asking about anything. And you will not be given any information. You will be expected to show courage and say nothing.
The Boat in the Evening Page 10