Читать книгу The Past Ahead - Gilbert Gatore - Страница 12

32. The cave Niko discovers resembles the one he’s spent years imagining in almost no way at all. When you enter it, the passageway widens as you move forward, opening into the first hollow space. His immediate plan is to make that his living area. Light and wind sometimes come this far, faintly, which eases the darkness and humidity. From the entrance to the cave it is impossible to see the high recess to which he will attach his bedding. Suspension is the only way to be protected from the animals and insects with which he must share his cave, he observes, congratulating himself on having brought twine with him. Yes, hanging the bedding is a good idea: the swinging movement of the setup will be enough to keep bats, rats, and cats at a distance. Cockroaches, spiders, and ants won’t be able to get at him except via the fastening point, and he promises himself to keep a particularly watchful eye on that. And if there are any mosquitoes and flies he’ll just have to get used to them. In the back of this first hollow space, a passageway he is forced to crawl through opens onto the ceiling of a very large room. Before he’s able to get down into it, Niko must first braid a long cord and attach it pretty firmly so that he can use it to climb up and down. So he goes out again to gather dried banana tree bark, which he dampens in order to work it without cracking the pieces, and from this he makes two long ropes. Still farther down the slope he finds a long stalk of bamboo, which he thrashes against the ground to soften it up. Three ropes are bound to provide him with what he needs to get down into the second hollow area. The twisted bamboo stalk assures solidity while the banana fiber cords will facilitate his grip.

33. Niko isn’t comfortable in a place that he hasn’t thoroughly checked out.

34. As he makes his descent, the torch, now humid and lacking air, threatens to go out with his every move. He realizes that he can’t continue his exploration and tries to go back up, but his weary arms won’t support him and he falls down.

35. He thinks his absence lasted only a very short period of time. One second that stretched out indefinitely, as far as the infinity of memory, as far as the dream’s eternity.

36. First he felt his arms defying, then his entire body deserting him. He remembers having let go and the awareness that his head was going to hit the ground first. And a moment later, he opens eyes that are stunned by what they’ve just seen and troubled by not recognizing anything in the darkness that greets them.

37. He wonders if he’s really awake when a monkey approaches him. He watches the animal’s silhouette as it detaches itself from the darkness. A stern face and a massive hand are displayed to sprinkle him with water and shake him before disappearing into the blackness, only to reappear soon thereafter. He muses over the scene from afar, as if it doesn’t concern him, because he is trying at the same time to reconstruct the dream he just had. He sees the monkey bustle about the way you see a bird go by in the sky or an ant on the ground—without paying it very much attention. He sees him without watching him, immersed as he is in what he saw when he was knocked out by the shock of his fall.

38. In the dream, Niko was walking around the island with his father. A brilliant sun was their companion, and the forest sounds echoed their good mood. They were walking amidst splendid eucalyptus trees, banana trees bowing under the weight of their heavy fruit clusters, acacias, and bushes of fern, hibiscus, and bamboo; and there were still other plants whose names he didn’t know. There seemed to be no animals at all other than a few birds swirling around, so high that their cries were inaudible. Neither was there any wind rustling through the foliage, so the silence was complete. However, nothing bothered them, and at first, they didn’t notice that the forest around them was being transformed as they wandered through it. Slowly the trees were growing longer and lining up to form columns, centering on the spot where they were standing. At the same time, the wild grass had been brought down by the soil, and the birds flying in the distance were coming closer. They were crows. In the dream, the trees—ever taller and leafier—ended up eclipsing the sun’s brightness, and soon only a dark and viscous red was breaking through the foliage. In the grip of this terror, frozen with fear, Niko and his father watched what was going on. The trees, now altered into human shapes, were forming an army of motionless, silent giants. No longer able to control his panic, Niko cried out. He wanted to tell his father that they had to run, but instead of a voice, flames came from his mouth. The flame first set fire to his father, who, before he succumbed as he choked on the smoke, asked, “Why, my son?” Very quickly the fire reached the giant figures that had once again turned into trees, and everything burned up except Niko. When the fire died out, Niko saw nothing but a charred expanse and a grimy sky as far as the eye could see. Even the lake had dried up. At that very moment a warm rain began to fall. Raising his eyes to the sky, Niko felt it shower on his face before he saw the monkey spit on him and shake him. He still didn’t know whether the darkness he saw was the continuation of the opaque fog the fire had left behind or whether he was now awake.

39. It’s impossible to know how long Niko lay there in the dark, at first unconscious, then mesmerized by the view of a monkey appearing and disappearing into the shadows, and finally engrossed in the recollections of his dream. Generally speaking, with Niko it’s impossible to have a reliable temporal reference point because he himself doesn’t think it’s terribly important, among other reasons.

40. The fall and the dream remind Niko of something. A confused memory. The monkey comes back. Again. He spits on his face, shakes him, and leaves. Suddenly Niko understands it’s water. The monkey keeps going to the spring to fetch it and then sprays him to wake him up. With that thought in mind Niko comes back to earth. He no longer sees the animal as an abstract presence but as a real being that from now on he will associate with specific memories. “Monkey,” he mumbles. “Water . . . cave . . . rope . . . torch,” he continues, and remembers very clearly where he was, why he’d come here, and how he’d fallen.

41. He doesn’t have the strength to be scared of the animal. What energy he has left is consumed by the pain pummeling away at the top of his skull and the other one ripping at his stomach. This anguish awakens a memory in him that slips away as soon as it’s stirred up. He must avoid certain thoughts.

42. He hears cries. The swarm comes closer and, suddenly, there are some twenty monkeys, big and small, surrounding Niko, turning him into a plaything. He doesn’t have time to be frightened when a multitude of curious, noisy fingers are exploring his nostrils, ruffling up his hair, pulling at the skin of his belly, tickling his feet, twisting his penis, and stuffing soil in his ears. Niko has to get up if he doesn’t want to risk winding up as a shapeless human paste. The idea has hardly taken shape inside his head when the unruly hands grab him and throw him in the air once and then even higher a second time. Forgetting the uproar, the pain, and the exhaustion for a moment, he understands he’s being flung the full length of the rope. At the third try he grabs hold of it and, after some long, painful, clumsy writhing, he manages to cling to a nearby edge of the passageway that leads to the first gallery. He almost falls several times but the whooping, which he interprets as encouragement, helps him hold on. Having finally made it to the passageway that should allow him to get back to the first hollow area and then to the outside, he turns around to thank the monkeys, but they’ve vanished. All he sees behind him is the rope swinging above a dark and silent hole.

43. The pain, hunger, and guilt that dig their pincers into him don’t leave him any time to wonder what just happened. Did he really run into monkeys down there? Was he cheered on, booed, ridiculed, or driven out? Does the cave continue beyond the expanse into which he’d fallen?

44. According to a fable whose details he can’t recall, there was a time when humans and monkeys of all kinds formed a single family. That was the day mankind began to think bad luck had come to earth. The tale draws the conclusion that whoever wishes for happiness must stop talking, dreaming, and thinking, in that order. Monkeys in general are said to be the guardians of this lost wisdom—gorillas in particular, since they have always kept to themselves, away from the snare of thinking and dreaming and of words above all, content instead to see, understand, and do.

45. For a while some people nicknamed him Niko the Monkey because they thought that, being mute, Niko could neither think nor dream.

46. To provide a basis for the comparison there was his smile, too.

47. Niko crawls to the outside. When he arrives at the edge of the small basin where he can quench his thirst, he sees that the luminous full moon is perfectly reflected in the mirror the water forms. He brings his lips to it, gently, so as not to disrupt the sublime vision. When at last he decides to listen to his senses rather than to his delight and drinks, his head, his stomach, and the nausea settle down.

48. It’s not so much the water per se, he makes himself think, but the bits of moon steeping in it that bring such comfort. He lies on the ground, legs and arms spread wide, chin planted firmly on the muddy edge of the basin, his eyes unseeing and his tongue extended at regular intervals to lap up the delicious water. He would be perfectly happy if time could stop and freeze him in this position, in this feeling. If he had no stomach, if the daylight wouldn’t come, and if he weren’t afraid to be attacked or to rot in this pose, he could undoubtedly live like this forever. To see the image of the moon floating before him, blur it from time to time as he dips his tongue, feel the coolness flow through his body, and wait for the image to find its purity again before disturbing it anew. To not be concerned with time. If happiness exists it must be something like this. The thought glistens in his head like the moon’s reflection in the basin in front of him.

49. Night has fallen, and the moon in the black water has become a small, gleaming lozenge whose radiance is heightened by the stars that look like motionless bubbles. Niko ends up seeing it as a manifold blur.

50. Happiness is what you are forced to abandon. That’s what he tells himself when he finally gets up.

51. How much time passed as he lay there, stretched out, with empty head and belly, distracted by the image of the water mirror? Long enough that he’d grown unaccustomed to standing upright and had to stay seated for a moment as he readjusted to keeping his head higher than the rest of his body. He tries to steady his feet. That’s when he hears a familiar ruckus. On a rocky mound the monkeys get restless when Niko appears behind a hillock not far from them. They come hurtling down the slope, and Niko staggers after them, just a few strides behind. A voice deep inside tells him to trust the monkeys. His heart seems sure that their destinies will be linked from now on. He’s certain they will guide him to the closest food.

52. “He who doesn’t know how to act observes, listens, and becomes kind,” confirms a saying he’s not thinking of.

53. On the ground, melons roll on their juicy curves, and bunches of bananas give off an enticing perfume high up. The monkeys pounce on the bananas, and, since it’s what he’d rather have but also to keep his distance and stay on the ground, Niko eats the melons. He grabs one fruit after another and splits them against a large stone beside him before scraping out the seeds and the flesh with his teeth. As he eats his fill, he’s in less of a hurry, choosing the heaviest and most aromatic fruit. In the end he even takes the time to slice them properly with the machete he’s still wearing on his belt and to throw the seeds away. The monkeys are devouring the bananas in silence. They seem uninterested in Niko, who studies them from a distance.

54. Satisfied, Niko lies on his back amidst the melons and their remnants. The rough leaves scratch his arms and legs, but he’s not paying them any mind. He’s looking for the moon in the sky but finds only a vague light veiled by an unmoving cloud. Happiness, he thinks, is a man forgotten by the others, his natural needs properly sorted out, comfortably settled down to feel the regular beating of his heart, listen to the distant noises, and admire the moon and the stars.

55. What’s happening that, without any transition, the images of the killings resurface and stiffen him in that convulsion that always leaves him with the look of a drowning victim who’s just been rescued from the water?

56. At the same time, there’s the rumble of a detonation, and with it the fruit that Niko had dropped beside him explodes. Overwhelmed by a flood of unbearable images and in the grip of tremors, he’s unaware of what’s happening and remains flat on the ground. Dimly some kind of commotion reaches his ears. Another blast and the dust surging forth beside him bring him back to himself and to what’s glaringly obvious: they’re shooting at him. And yet, as if this assessment didn’t really concern him, Niko doesn’t budge, a rock among the rocks, a melon among the melons. In the center of his expressionless face, his eyes, still staring at the sky, reflect the moon’s discarded glow.

57. Another explosion, and this time its discharge penetrates him while a terror tempest lifts him up. He slides behind the rock on which he’d been splitting melons just before. Hugging his bent knees, burying his head inside the ball he’s formed, and holding his breath, he focuses on locating the monkeys by their sound. Could they have left without him? And what if all this were merely a trap meant to eliminate him, the intruder that he is in the cave? Is he right to trust them?

58. Noticing that he’s in the same position in which he had surprised so many of his victims, he’s once again overcome by a flood of memories that sicken and exasperate him to the point that he vomits out everything he’s just eaten. The bits of melon that stream onto the ground are still intact.

59. The firing stops but Niko doesn’t feel safe, and so he waits. Even if he must wait several days before he can be sure it’s safe to stand up, he’s prepared to do so. Patience has always been his primary quality. After a lengthy silence during which, in addition to being watchful, he must avoid falling into the snare of his drifting thoughts, a groan catches his attention, growing weaker and weaker and more disjointed. Like a wary turtle, he carefully exposes his head so he can hear better; then, to pinpoint where the sound is coming from, he crouches to let his sweat-covered forehead, and then his eyes, glance over the rock. A few steps away lies a monkey, a bullet in the back of its head. The flowing blood forms an opaque puddle around him. Its position leads him to infer that the animal was hit as he came running in the direction of the spot where Niko was lying. The scene, sanitized by the pallid light of the moon, doesn’t seem real enough to unleash the avalanche of ominous thoughts lying in ambush deep inside Niko.

She roams around inside her memories as in a place that is both familiar and unknown, a house fallen into darkness where she searches for markers by feeling her way. In this half trance, she sees herself, a different self, stretched out on the bed, intoxicated with confusion and her surrender to sadness. She lies there for a long time, and it is the ringing of her telephone, she recalls, that draws her from her inertia.

A friend suggested they go to the theatre that evening. Since she couldn’t remain lying on her bed indefinitely and had no idea what to do next, she accepted the invitation. The voice on the other end of the line was clearly delighted, and she had trouble responding to it. It was always the same voice that showed up when things weren’t going well with the other one, the voice she also associated with the most substantial discussions: Victor’s voice.

The play presented a man with an incurable disease whose unpronounceable name hinted at a connection to the country that had so harshly regained her attention that morning. She could easily identify her mother tongue even if she didn’t know how to speak it. In the play, the man was visited by his guardian angel, who suggested that, while he was awaiting death, he spend his time collecting inside a small box everything he wanted to leave behind of himself, everything that he’d want to be associated with afterward. The play’s title was In Memory of Him. For some reason she didn’t admit to herself at the time, she thought it was beautiful but hard to take and disturbing. A few years later, sitting at her desk, she thinks she knows why the show had been so gripping. Perhaps that was the moment when the link was formed between the revulsion that had submerged her and the project to which she now devotes herself thousands of kilometers away.

After the play, she invited Victor to have a drink. At first she was surprised that he didn’t seem to have heard the news that had so shaken her that very morning, and, powerless to think about anything else, she only half listened to his comments on the play. Still, he came to it in the end:

“Did you hear those unbelievable figures on the prisons in your country? It seems that the number of prisoners is so enormous and the legal authorities so overloaded that it will take several centuries to handle all the cases.”

“Yes,” she answered, feigning the same neutrality as if she’d been told the score of the cricket world cup.

“It’s really incredible, all the same, that such a situation can exist. It gives you a terrifying idea of the violence in that country but also of the indifference that obscures it all. It’s as if a crime were committed in France resulting in the imprisonment of the entire population of Lyon and no one would care.”

“It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” she uttered, to see his reaction.

For a moment he held the glass he’d just picked up to his lips, put it back down, and yelled at her, “You’re appalling!” She smiled at him, and then he understood she wasn’t speaking seriously.

What he said was exactly right: what she’d just expressed, which is what she’d heard that morning from the mouth of a classmate, was appalling. That’s what had shocked her in the sentence: the world’s obscenity, not in the display of horror and injustice but in the attitude of those who could find nothing else to say in reaction but “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . . ,” who could do nothing about it except allude to it between a sip of coffee and a little joke, as they’d invariably become indignant over it before moving on to something else, to normal life. That’s what she could no longer deal with, that way of being resigned to every upheaval, of not letting themselves be shattered at the risk, they thought, of adding their own misery to the already-crushing wretchedness of the world. Suddenly, the attitude she had been so lovingly taught and in which she had wallowed so comfortably for years made her sick. But could it be any other way?

Perhaps, she thought as she came back to Victor who was still dwelling on how unacceptable he found the situation, that was why she’d always had a special feeling for him. He was always moved, even if it was just limited to words, and he’d always react while drawing the attention of the indifferent to the issue. That’s already something.

She can’t understand why she’d managed to be insensitive to the world for so long. How many times before today, when her normal routine had fallen apart, had saying “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” been enough for her as well? How many people have, and will always have, no other reaction but that? Would she still be among them if the volume on the radio hadn’t shattered her routine?

She sighs and goes back to her memories.

The interminable discussion and her walk back brought her home at the break of dawn. But instead of sleeping she began to write. That day had just made her decide to embark on a crucial project. Writing the summary of this undertaking couldn’t wait. She concentrated first on writing the title in calligraphy on a separate sheet of paper: In Memory of . . . It took her a solid hour before she was satisfied with the result. At the time she thought she was following her usual meticulous ways. Today she knows she was mostly taking the opportunity to reflect again, to pay attention to the detail of her idea at the same time that she was paying attention to the curves of the ten letters. Beyond the project itself, she was preoccupied with other things.

In particular, she became aware that the primary result was that she’d need to abandon her studies, which had now become inconsequential. The interest of market finance, logistics, and other management controls was dissolved in the idea whose title she was carefully composing.

The next thing was that her parents were not to know. An obvious necessity.

They’d taken her in as an orphan of the tragedy when she seemed doomed. She knew how different her lot would have been without their inexplicable generosity. She would have never known any tenderness; she would have never had the benefit of all the attentions she’d been given until this moment; she wouldn’t have studied with the brilliant results for which everyone gave her credit. They had been considerate enough to let her keep her name, Isaro, and, together with her color, that was the only sign preventing her from assimilating into their family. She never took the trouble of explaining that they were her adoptive parents. Better than a family, she often told herself, they were angels. Rescuers and providential protectors whose wings had allowed the little pearl that she was that had been cast out of the water to continue to grow.

Nevertheless, at a given moment that she has trouble identifying, their relationship came undone, thread by thread, until it was no more than an abstraction, just enough to keep the illusion going of a reality that had actually disappeared. For a while, the photographs they’d look at and would take endlessly formed the one and only pillar of their vanished family. The day she decided to leave and study in Paris, neutrality collapsed. Her parents were merely disciplinarians who flung stifling pieces of advice at her, by telephone and every day. She eventually screened their calls and then changed her number. From then on their sole connection consisted of the automatic monthly deposit from their bank account to hers. Because of it she was able to keep living in the capital city and soon, she hoped, to buy her plane ticket.

Now she tells herself that having behaved towards them in that manner had been foolish. She regrets it, even without thinking she could have acted differently. She believes that the alienation and then the rupture were born from an inevitable misunderstanding: everything her parents would do to anchor her in life removed her further from the only thing essential in her eyes. The more she realized what seemed for them to be the ultimate objectives or guarantees, the more she suffered from wasting her energy on running after titles that, no matter what, were unjustified. She wrongly confused them with the malaise that they made her suffer. They never stopped loving her, even in the silence she had imposed on them, which they never violated although they could so easily have done just that, by stopping the monthly deposits, for instance.

Would she be capable of loving someone in spite of herself? Would she be able to resist the desire to treat the person for whom she’d done everything, and who in the end would prove to be as insolent as she was toward her parents, as an ingrate and punish her? Was that wholehearted, unconditional love a characteristic of guardian angels?