I wish I wrote the way one speaks. I wish I wrote the way one sings, or the way one yells, or simply the way one lights a cigarette with a match and smokes gently, thinking of unimportant things. But that is simply not done. So I write the way one writes, sitting on a straw-bottomed chair, head tilted slightly to the left, right forearm carrying at its end a hand resembling a tarantula in the process of paying out its path of entwined twigs and spittle. (‘Leaf, be burned in the glass ashtray!’)
Behind all the papers, behind all the photos, there is a universe which I know well but which I am never able to rediscover. Behind the glass wall of bottles, and beneath the plateaux of tables, there is a calm phantom which watches me wordlessly.
I peer in vain at the flimsy sheet, reading the words that follow each other. I read in vain what is written between the words, such as:
Hablar: ni, tlatoa
Habla: Tlatolli
H. en lengua extraña: Cecni tlatolli yc nitlatoa
I try in vain to see everything, my eyes can penetrate no farther. Impossible to enter the kingdom. Impossible to travel in the blurred photos full of large grey clouds floating in a black sky. Impossible to pass through the glass door on which is written:
(‘Leaf, be burned by the eyes’ gaze!’)
And in a word, I, frail spirit that I am, with my red-rimmed eyes, constricted throat, itching hands, yes, it is true, I do likewise. That is how I avenge myself, when, at night, I open the door giving access to my warm, light-filled corridor, and then (but who would really be likely to enter, since vision as it reads constitutes a speedier flight even than that of the telescope which takes the star that seems so close and thrusts it thousands of light-years away?) bar the way.
I wish I wrote the way one sends postcards. But it cannot be done. I cannot simply say: I went here, and then there, and then I took the train for Penang, and one day, while I was hugging the coast of Panama between Nargana island and Tikantiki island, the engine broke down and I had to paddle. Or that on the road to Oaxaca, a fat, moustachioed man in a mauve Cadillac drew his revolver and aimed it at me, yelling: ‘Que quieres?’ I could have told all that very quickly, it happened just like that, a few incidents from a glorious life, brought impeccably to light. The time I smoked an Esfinge cigarette, on Christmas Day, on the beach at San Juan del Sur. The day I entered the dark shop at Saraburi, and said to the man behind the counter:
‘Khrung Thong mi maï kap?’
‘Mi kap.’
Or the time I was in the smoke-filled room that reeked of beer, and said to Hastings:
‘I used to be rather good, y’know, but now . . .’
Or, on another occasion, to Mezcala:
‘Quempatio?’
Or, that day, standing in front of the dog which had its ears cocked:
‘Yap! Yap!’
All these languages that I have made use of, and all these faces in which the mobile mouth has opened for an instant to let strange, self-assured sounds emerge. I shall not forget them. I cannot forget them. But the fact remains that I could never translate them into other words, nor turn them into true and mildly adventurous stories. Nothing has happened. I know nothing. I was not capable of sending you the postcards at the right moment.
So how could I possibly say what is meant by misery, or love, or fear? Perhaps people write novels simply because they do not know how to compose letters, or vice versa.
The Chilam Balam
The book of Enigmas
The sacred riddles
What is licked by the jaguar’s tongue? Fire.
Iglukik legend of the man transformed into woman:
A human being over here
A penis over here.
May the opening be wide
and spacious.
Opening, opening, opening!
The Walam Olum
BUT THE JOURNEY must continue farther still, later still. I flee so that I shall no longer know anything about the future. Damnation take the years ahead, blind years! I no longer want to see the doors swing open. One must discard all the things that resemble reality and that are lies, nothing but lies. One must surrender oneself, like a sinking ship. One must search far away, in an upside-down world, one must rummage in the past. Find the father you never knew, the mother who never bore you. Concrete platforms, shop windows, you say: tomorrow! tomorrow! and men’s eyes gleam with covetous desire. But I know what is lying in wait. This vision of the earth splitting apart, of mouths hollowing out their greedy whorls, is within me, horribly. I am in reverse. I am fleeing to be outside myself, to be bigger than myself. I do not want to know any countries. To know is to die. I do not want to know any women. To know women is to enter the scheme of mortal things.
I am nothing more than a wheel. I am empty of all thought, all imagination. I am empty of all fixed desire. Great highway of knowledge, slipstream, racetrack, prairie, cordillera of knowledge. I am continually exceeding limits. That is what one must do. Cross through the walls, smash the windowpanes, tear off the flowered wallpapers, break the horizon into little bits. It is time to leave the eternal room. It is time to find something else to say, something else to think, something else to see. I am free, I am probably free. Being free: does that not mean walking alone down the muddy streets of Huejuquilla, past the plaster houses? Being free: does that not mean riding up into the deserted mountains, under the blue sky which houses the sun? Movement is the only true self-awareness. Being free: does that not mean being large, lively, swift like oneself?
Time is immense. I see it everywhere, spread over the earth. It has huge masses of rock weighing tons, it has rivers that flow to the sea, it has innumerable trees, clouds, men. Time is there, on display in the open countryside, the mountains, the plains where towns have their being. It is not a dream. If time existed only in men’s minds it would not be worth discussing. But it is there in front of me, absolutely real. It lacks nothing. Nothing has been forgotten. All the inexhaustible centuries are there, painted on the red earth, drawn on the limestone cliffs, stretched out over the sea. When I walk through the middle of this fabulous landscape, I am walking through time itself. I scale ravines, I cross forests of filaos, I drink water from pools full of leeches. All of that is a voyage through time’s landscape. What I am fleeing from is mankind’s future. But the hereafter, the universal advent is there, too, living all around me. It has no need of signs or symbols. It is whole. It breathes. It is known. It has the sky’s air, the streams’ water, the sharp peaks’ rocks, the sun’s heat, the frost’s coldness. It has the emptiness of space, of the stars, of the galaxies. I will tell you what my flight entails: going from one end of time to the other, at a greater speed than light. Or alternatively, lying on my back in the dry grass, one day, looking up at the motionless sky which carries a detailed drawing of everything that has happened and everything that is going to happen.
Nothing is forgotten: so many men have died, without anything changing in the world. In the fields, along the edges of roads, now, there are these little wooden crosses bearing neither name nor address; I flee through the middle of the forest of little crosses, and I remember everything.
It was yesterday. It was today. I have not forgotten their thin faces, their shining eyes, their quick, confident gestures. So many women have departed, too, women I still love despite the distance. They are still there. A close look is all that is needed. If one tilts the drawing a little askew, one will see the outline of their faces and bodies appear, there, traced by the lines of the foliage, by the horizon’s hills, by the wings of the sparrow hawk or by the clouds’ globes.
When I walk along like this, it is with them that I am walking. I follow the rhythm of their highlanders’ pace, while they advance along the mule-path, under the blazing sun. I see their white costumes, their wide-brimmed hats, and the rifles that they carry slung across their backs. Cartridge-belts are draped around their hips, and a double bag and rolled blanket covers the left shoulder. They make quick progress, marching for days o
n end without resting. When evening comes, they light a fire and cook some cornflour. They sleep rolled up in their blankets, their heads resting on their rifle butts. They never leave a trace behind them: they bury their excrements, and pile rocks over the dead fire to hide the scorched earth. I am one of them. I am always with them. I am fleeing along the same path that they are taking, stealthily across the mountains. I skirt great desert sierras where there is a red plant which is fatal to horses when eaten. I see the sun sparkling above the earth, the sun of eternity. My feet are gashed by flints, my limbs ache with weariness. Sometimes we are so thirsty that we chew bitter berries from trees. It is so cold at night that our bones are pierced through and through. We are afraid. We communicate in gestures, or whisper as we march. The mountains open up, always revealing new mountains. We all think and say the same things: the people of Mezquitic are traitors; the day before yesterday the federals hanged ten men and a child from the branches of a single tree. Among our company is a big, burly man whose red hair is cut short. Each morning, at dawn, he kneels on the ground and prays. Then he distributes the communion, the morsels of stale bread. Nothing has been forgotten. All the sufferings and deaths are alive in this landscape, inextricably mingled with its outspread beauty. Nothing has been of any use. But then the landscapes have not been of any use, either. They are there. They have time.
One day, we climbed up to a plateau covered with flat stones. That is what it is called. The Plateau of Stones. We skirted the walls that snake across the scrub. When the first rifle-shots rang out we could see nothing. The sun was high in the black-blue sky, the heat scorched the flat stones. We threw ourselves on the ground, and began firing at random. The battle lasted three days and two nights. The red-haired man gave orders. Occasionally, a prisoner was brought in. There was one who looked at us with eyes full of hatred. He said: ‘You will die, all of you!’ The red-haired man gave him absolution and made the sign of the cross; then he placed his revolver against the prisoner’s temple and fired.
Nothing is effaced. Everything is always there, present in the pure air. It is that very essence that I inhale. By the third day we had realized that it was no longer possible to make our way out. The rifle reports had come closer and closer. Already, the dry ground had sprouted many little wooden crosses. The men were so thirsty that they sucked their own blood, and trembled with fever. They were so tired that they fell asleep like slabs of stone.
Then, around three in the afternoon, we heard the army colonel shouting something. The hundred and fifty soldiers began racing towards the stone walls, the sounds of their running feet gradually converging. Bullets struck from all sides, the rattle of shots was continual now. The sun blazed in the centre of a sky that had turned even deeper blue, even deeper black. That is where we died, all of us, one after the other, our bodies riddled by dozens of bullets. All except one, who was just wounded. They hanged him the following day. We were not buried, and the vultures, wolves and ants ate us up.
And yet we are there, still. The dry mountains are there, too, and the Plateau of Stones, and the sun glittering in the black-blue sky. The flight leads from one end of time to the other, but it never goes outside the boundaries of the stone landscape. It destroys nothing. It sets nothing down in books, it fixes nothing in the yellowing photographs of hanged children. It is true, and precise, and living. Now is perhaps the right moment to set down the words of this nasal song, this deeply moving song:
I am going to sing you a corrido
About a friend of my country
Called José Valentin
Who was trapped and shot on the mountain
And I want to recall
That winter evening when
As ill luck would have it
Valentin fell into the hands of the Government
The captain asked him
What people were in command
There are eight hundred soldiers who have occupied
Olanda’s farm
The colonel asked him
What people were acting as guides
There are eight hundred soldiers whom
Mariano Mejía is leading across the mountain
Valentin being a man
Refused to tell them anything
I am a true man one of those who devised
The Revolution
On the way to the hillside
Valentin felt like weeping
O Mother of Guadeloupe
Because of your religion they are going to kill me
Fly fly little dove
And tell what he told you
This is the ballad of a valiant man
Named Valentin
THE FLIGHT LEADS in the direction of villages of mud huts with thatched roofs, clinging to the sides of mountains. It leads there at the end of long exhausting rides through forests and across the deserts of high plateaux. It involves crossing canyons more than a thousand feet deep. It involves descending endless paths, surrounded by silence, stubbing one’s feet against the sharp pebbles embedded in the ground. It is a long, painful march that is a constant process of flinging towards the rear. The sun scorches the back of the neck, the empty sky is amorphous, the chunks of rock send out dazzling sparkles. There is so much power, so much light. It is words and rhythms that vanish backward, that are uprooted at each step. Emptiness enters slowly, stripping away, reducing to ashes, expelling. While the person known as Y. Man walks ahead of it, without ever pausing, the emptiness spreads out, penetrates everything. Movie houses, television sets, glossy magazines, jazz records, cafés, churches all disintegrate. The motionless sky strikes the head with terrible blows, demanding that one should be quiet at last. All the flights from reality, the books, photo albums, primers, all the songs and stories. Expelled, transformed into emptiness.
So, at the end, there is this circular village, inhabited by people who refuse. One day, around four in the afternoon, he enters the village along with a caravan of donkeys all loaded with cartons of beer. The rain is falling. He squats on the ground, under a tree, and waits. The tree is very big, and they are all able to shelter under its spreading branches. The donkeys and mules, relieved of their loads, graze in the rain. The others, those who refuse, are standing around the tree, arms crossed, watching. Nobody asks anybody anything.
Santa Catalina, under the tree.
It started raining as we entered.
The governor sent word that it was impossible to
give us lodging:
did others give them lodging when they went down into the plain?
There was a tree, a very big tree
At least nine hundred years old.
Tree, tree,
living column with thousands of living leaves
tree with immense branches stretching towards the West,
the North, the South, and the East.
Sightless, voiceless, immobile tree,
Calm old tree
Indifferent
tree.
Perhaps it is you who taught me:
No truth
No truth!
You don’t write
You stay put, you want nothing.
You never give anything.
Around the base
the masses of dead leaves made a carpet.
We slept on that carpet.
We lit a fire with the dead leaves,
and sat upon the roots protruding from the ground.
I made use of the tree,
but it did nothing for me in return.
Tree,
Tree haunted by hanged men
Tree with secret leaves
Tree smelling like a plant
Tree.
You are a giant vegetable
And I am a dwarfish man.
That is probably what he was thinking, just at that moment. It is difficult to tell. Or maybe he was thinking:
‘I renounce the Greco-Roman world! I am no longer its son. I can no longer be a member of its race. I know nothing about it any
longer. Yesterday, no doubt, the world died peacefully, sitting in its armchair. This man’s eyes remained as dry as pebbles. Filthy Latin world, you wanted to make a slave out of me, so that I should kill, brand with a red-hot iron, rape in your name. But I am a thoroughly ungrateful son who bears no respect towards his dead father. Your wars were useless, your laws were phony: I have no illusions on that score. I am the bad son who laughs, and pisses on his dead father’s grave. Goodbye, farewell, I no longer have a father, I no longer have a world.
‘A civilization without secrets no longer has any surprises to offer. The one thing left for me to learn is how to forget it. Vast speechless landscapes, prairies, lakes, arid plateaux, mosquito-infested lagoons! Come to my aid I Your silences are welcome, because they kill men. I am nowhere. I have left my world behind, and have not yet found another. That is the tragic adventure. I have departed, but not yet arrived. All the theories were false, all the inflated words that had been put into my head answered no purpose. It is easy to understand that: they were mute words, voiceless parrots. To doubt is to believe: I have slid beyond doubt. I am stupefied. I scarcely move. A step here, one step farther, a movement of the hand, a trembling of the eyelid. I can see what is happening all around my body. What I see, I know. What I know, is emptiness . . . Let us wait. But for what? Watch out for what? Nothing comes. I am seized by the rocks, trees cover my face. That is all perfectly normal. Calm, calm. Did those who fed me, those who created me, know what they were doing? I am no longer a judge in any trial. I no longer want to give evidence. Did I really see the accident, see what happened? Was I THERE? No, I can no longer swear to anything. There must be moments when, despite willingness of body and habit of mind, I must have a peculiar air of being absent.
The Book of Flights Page 22