Читать книгу The Orange Grove - Larry Tremblay - Страница 7
ОглавлениеIf Amed cried, Aziz cried too. If Aziz laughed, Amed laughed too. People would make fun of them, saying: “Later on they’ll marry each other.”
Their grandmother’s name was Shahina. With her bad eyes she always confused them. She would call them her two drops of water in the desert. “Stop holding hands,” she would say, “I feel as if I’m seeing double.” Or, “Some day, there won’t be any more drops, there will be water, that’s all.” She could have said: “One day there will be blood. That’s all.”
Amed and Aziz found their grandparents in the ruins of their house. Their grandmother’s skull had been smashed in by a beam. Their grandfather was lying in his bedroom, his body shredded by the bomb that had come from the side of the mountain where every night the sun disappeared.
It had still been night when the bomb fell. But Shahina had already been up. Her body was found in the kitchen.
“What was she doing in the kitchen in the middle of the night?” asked Amed.
“We’ll never know. Maybe she was baking a cake in secret,” his mother replied.
“Why in secret?” asked Aziz.
“Maybe for a surprise,” Tamara suggested to her two sons, sweeping the air with her hand as if brushing away a fly.
Their grandmother used to talk to herself. In fact, she had liked to talk to everything around her. The boys had seen her ask questions of the flowers in the garden, argue with the stream that ran between their houses. She could spend hours bent over the water, whispering to it. Zahed had been ashamed to see his mother behave in this way. He had rebuked her for setting a bad example for her grandsons. “You act like a lunatic,” he’d yelled. Shahina had bowed her head and closed her eyes, in silence.
One day Amed had told his grandmother:
“There’s a voice in my head. It talks to itself. I can’t make it be quiet, it says strange things. As if someone else were hidden inside me, someone bigger than me.”
“Tell me, Amed, tell me the strange things it says to you.”
“I can’t tell you because I forget them right away.”
That had been a lie. He did not forget them.
Aziz had been to the big city once. His father, Zahed, rented a car. Hired a chauffeur. They left at dawn. Aziz watched the new landscape file past the car window. Thought the space the car sliced through was beautiful. Thought the trees disappearing from sight beautiful. Thought the cows, horns smeared with red, beautiful, calm as big stones on the burning ground. The road was shaken by joy and anger. Aziz was writhing in pain. And smiling. His gaze drowned the landscape with tears. And the landscape was like the image of a country.
Zahed had said to his wife:
“I’m taking him to the hospital in the big city.”
“I will pray, Amed will pray” was Tamara’s simple reply.
When the driver announced they were finally approaching the city, Aziz fainted and saw nothing of the splendors he’d heard about. He regained consciousness lying in a bed. In the room were other beds, with other children in them. He thought he was lying in all those beds. He thought the excessive pain had multiplied his body. He thought he was twisting in pain in all those beds with all those bodies. A doctor was leaning over him. Aziz smelled his spicy perfume. The doctor was smiling at Aziz. Even so, Aziz was afraid of the man.
“Did you sleep well?”
Aziz said nothing. The doctor straightened up, his smile faded. He talked to Aziz’s father. Father and doctor exited the big room. Zahed’s fists were clenched. He was breathing heavily.
A few days later, Aziz was feeling better. They gave him a thick liquid to drink. He took it morning and night. It was pink. He didn’t like the taste, but it relieved his pain. His father came to see him every day. Said he was staying with his cousin Kacir. That was all he said. Zahed looked at Aziz in silence, touched his brow. His hand was as hard as a branch. Once, Aziz woke with a start. His father was looking at him, sitting on a chair. His gaze frightened Aziz.
A little girl was in the bed next to that of Aziz. Her name was Naliffa. She told Aziz that her heart had not grown properly in her chest.
“My heart grew upside down, you know, it’s pointed the wrong way.”
She said that to all the other children sleeping in the big hospital room. Naliffa talked to everybody. One night, Aziz screamed in his sleep. Naliffa was frightened. At daybreak, she told him what she’d seen.
“Your eyes went white like balls of dough, you stood up on your bed, and you waved your arms. I thought you were trying to scare me. I called to you. But your mind was no longer in your head. It had disappeared I don’t know where. The nurses came. They put a screen around your bed.”
“I had a nightmare.”
“Why are there nightmares? Do you know?”
“I don’t know, Naliffa. Mama often says, ‘God only knows.’”
“Mama says the same thing: ‘God only knows.’ She also says, ‘It’s been that way since the dawn of time.’ The dawn of time, Mama told me, is the first night of the world. It was so dark that the first ray of sunlight that broke through the night howled in pain.”
“More likely it was the night that howled as it was being pierced.”
“Maybe,” said Naliffa, “maybe.”
A few days later, Zahed asked Aziz about the little girl who had been in the next bed. Aziz replied that her mother had come to get her because she was cured. His father lowered his head. He said nothing. After a long while, he raised his head again. He still didn’t say anything. Then he bent over his son. He placed a kiss on his brow. It was the first time he’d done that. Aziz had tears in his eyes. His father murmured, “Tomorrow, we’re going home too.”
Aziz left with his father and the same driver. He watched the road fly past in the rearview mirror. His father was creating a strange silence, smoking in the car. He had brought dates and a cake. Before arriving at the house, Aziz asked his father if he was all better.
“You won’t go back to the hospital again! Our prayers have been answered.”
Zahed placed his big hand on his son’s head. Aziz was happy. Three days later the bomb from the other side of the mountain split the night and killed his grandparents.
On the day Zahed and Aziz came back from the big city, Tamara received a letter from her sister, Dalimah. She had gone to America some years earlier for an internship in data processing. She had been selected from a hundred candidates, quite an achievement. But she’d never come back. Dalimah wrote regularly to her sister even though Tamara rarely replied. In the letters she described her life. There was no war over there, that was what made her so happy. And so daring. She offered to send money but Tamara curtly refused her help.
In her letter, Dalimah announced that she was pregnant. Her first child. She asked Tamara to come over with the twins. She would find a way to bring them to America. She let it be understood that Tamara should abandon Zahed. Leave him alone with his war and his groves of orange trees.
“How she’s changed in a few years!”
There were days when Tamara hated her sister. She was mad at her: how could she expect Tamara to leave her husband? She wouldn’t leave Zahed. No. And she would fight too, even if Dalimah wrote that their war was pointless, that there would only be losers.
Zahed had stopped asking for news about her long ago. For him, Dalimah was dead. He wouldn’t even touch her letters. “I don’t want to be soiled,” he would say, disgusted. Dalimah’s husband was an engineer. Dalimah never mentioned him in her letters. She knew that in her family’s eyes he was a hypocrite and a coward. Like the bomb, he’d come from the other side of the mountain. He was an enemy. He’d fled to America. To gain acceptance there he had recounted horrors and lies about their people. That was what Tamara and Zahed believed. Had Dalimah not found anything better to do when she arrived there than to marry an enemy? How could she? “It was God who put him in my way,” she had written to them one day. “She’s an idiot,” thought Tamara. “America has clouded her judgment. What is she waiting for? For us all to be slaughtered by her husband’s friends? What did she think when she married him? That she was going to contribute to the peace process? Basically, she has always been selfish. Why bother telling her about our hardships? Who knows? Her husband might be thrilled.”
Later, in a brief reply to her sister, Tamara said nothing about Aziz having been in the hospital. Or about the bomb that had just killed her parents-in-law.
Men pulled up in a jeep. Amed and Aziz caught sight of a cloud of dust on the road that ran close to their house. The family was in the orange grove. That was where Zahed had wanted to bury his parents. He had just thrown in the last spadeful of earth. His forehead and arms were wet with sweat. Tamara was crying and biting the inside of her cheek. The jeep stopped on the side of the road. Three men emerged from it. The tallest held a machine gun. They did not head for the orange grove immediately. They lit cigarettes. Amed dropped his brother’s hand and went to the road. He wanted to hear what the three men were saying. He couldn’t. They were speaking too quietly. The youngest of the three finally took a few steps towards him. Amed recognized Halim. He’d grown a lot.
“Remember me? I’m Halim. I met you at the village school. When there still was a school.” Halim started to laugh.
“Yes, I remember you, you were the only one of the grown-ups who talked to my brother and me. Your beard’s grown.”
“We want to talk to your father, Zahed.”
Amed headed for the orange grove, followed by the three men. His father approached them. Amed saw his mother’s eyes harden. She shouted at him to join her. The men argued with Zahed for a long time. Tamara thought to herself that there was a curse on this day. She watched her husband. Zahed hung his head, looked at the ground. Halim gestured to Amed, who broke away from the arms of his mother, who was holding her two sons against her belly, to join the group of men. Zahed laid his hand on the boy’s head, saying proudly:
“This is my son Amed.”
“And the other boy?”
“Aziz, his twin brother.”
They stayed till evening. Zahed showed them the ruins of his parents’ house. They all looked up toward the mountain as if they were seeking in the sky the track of the bomb. Tamara made tea. She sent the children to their room. Later, Amed and Aziz watched out the window as the man with the machine gun went back to the jeep and returned a few minutes later, carrying a bag. They thought they heard their mother cry. Then the men left. The sound of the jeep driving away echoed in the night for a long time. Amed hugged his brother tight and finally fell asleep.
The next day Aziz said:
“Didn’t you notice? The sounds don’t sound the same and silence seems to be hiding to work on some dirty trick.”
“You were sick. That’s why you’re imagining things.”
But Amed knew that his brother was right. From his bedroom window he caught a glimpse of his mother. He called to her. She moved away. Amed thought she was crying. He saw her disappear behind the amaryllis his grandmother had planted the year before. Now they were enormous. Their open blossoms swallowed the light. Amed and Aziz went down to the first floor. Their mother hadn’t fixed the morning meal. Their father hadn’t slept, they could tell by his tired face. He was sitting on the kitchen floor. What was he doing there, alone? It was the first time the boys had seen their father doing that.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
They were hungry though. Next to their father was a canvas bag.
“What’s that?” asked Aziz. “Did the men in the jeep forget it?”
“They didn’t forget it,” said Zahed.
He gestured to his sons to sit beside him. Then he talked about the man with the machine gun.
“He’s an important man,” he told his sons. “He comes from the next village. His name is Soulayed. He talked to me with his heart. He insisted on seeing the ruins of your grandparents’ house. He will pray for the salvation of their souls. He’s a pious man. An educated man. When he finished drinking his tea he took my hand.
“He said to me: ‘How peaceful your house is! I close my eyes and the perfume of the orange trees sweeps over me. Your father, Mounir, worked his whole life on this arid soil. It was the desert here. With God’s help your father worked a miracle. Made oranges grow where there had been only sand and stones. Don’t think that because I come to you with a machine gun, I don’t have the eyes and ears of a poet. I hear and I see that which is just and pleasant. You are a bighearted man. Your house is clean. Everything in its place. Your wife’s tea is delicious. You know what they say, too much sugar, too little sugar: good tea falls between the two. Your wife’s is the golden mean. The stream that runs between your father’s house and your own is in the very middle too. From the road it’s the first thing one notices, the beauty that’s exactly in the middle. Zahed, your father was known throughout the land. He was a just man. It took a just man to transform this faceless territory into a paradise. The birds are never wrong where paradise is concerned, even when they hide in the shadow of the mountains. They recognize it very quickly. Tell me, Zahed, do you know the names of the birds that are singing right now? Surely not. There are too many and their songs are too elusive. Through the window I can see some with wings that flash a saffron color. Those birds have come from very far away. Just now their vivid colors mingle with those of the orange grove where you have just buried your parents. And their song rings out like a blessing. But can these nameless birds lessen your grief? No. Revenge is the only answer for your grief. Listen carefully, Zahed. In nearby villages other houses have been destroyed. Many people have died because of missiles and bombs. Our enemies want to seize our land. They want our land to build their houses and make their wives pregnant. After invading our villages they will advance to the big city. They will kill our women. Enslave our children. And that will be the end of our country. Our earth will be soiled by their steps, by their spittle. Do you believe that God will allow this sacrilege? Do you believe that, Zahed?’
“That is what Soulayed said to your father.”
Amed and Aziz dared not move or speak. Never had their father talked at such length. Zahed stood up. Took a few steps in the room. Amed whispered to his brother: “He’s thinking. When he walks like that it means he’s thinking.”
After a long moment Zahed opened the bag the men had left behind. Inside was a strange belt which he unrolled. It was so heavy he needed both hands to lift it.
“Soulayed brought it,” Zahed told his sons. “At first I didn’t realize what he was showing me. Halim put the belt on. That was when I understood that those men were here to see me. Your mother came in. She was bringing more tea. She saw Halim and started to shriek. She spilled the tray. The teapot fell to the floor. A glass broke. I asked your mother to pick it all up and come back with more tea. I apologized to Soulayed. Your mother shouldn’t have shrieked.”
Aziz wanted to touch the belt. His father pushed him away. He put it back in the bag and left the room. Amed and Aziz watched at the window as he disappeared in the fields of orange trees.
Tamara rarely talked with her husband. She preferred their silences to their usual arguments. They loved one another as men and women should love one another in the eyes of God and men.
Often, before joining her husband in bed, she would go into the garden. She would sit on the bench in front of the roses and inhale the rich scents that rose from the damp earth. Let herself be lulled by the music of insects, raise her head to seek the moon. Look at it as if it were an old friend she’d just run into. Some nights the moon made her think of a fingernail print in the flesh of the sky. She liked these moments when she was alone before infinity. Her children were sleeping. Her husband was waiting for her in their bedroom and she might have existed as a star that shone for worlds unknown. Gazing at the sky, Tamara wondered if the moon had known the desire for death, to disappear from the face of night and leave men orphans of the light. Its weak light borrowed from the sun’s.
Beneath the starry sky, Tamara didn’t fear talking to God. She felt as if she knew Him better than did her husband. Her words were lost in the sound of water in the stream. Yet she still hoped that they rose up to Him.
When the men who’d come in the jeep left their house, Zahed had insisted on giving them oranges and asked his wife to help him fill two big baskets. She’d refused. That night Tamara had spent longer than usual on the bench. She’d dared not utter the words that were burning her tongue. This time, too, her prayer remained silent:
“Your name is great, my heart too small to contain it entirely. What would You do with the prayer of a woman like me? My lips scarcely touch the shadow of Your first syllable. But they say that Your heart is greater than Your name. Your heart, no matter its size, is great enough that a woman can hear it in her own. That’s what they say when talking about You and they speak only the truth. But why must one live in a country where time cannot do its work? The paint hasn’t had time to peel nor the curtains to turn yellow, the plates haven’t had time to chip. Things never serve their time, the living are always slower than the dead. Our men age faster than their wives. They dry like tobacco leaves. It’s hatred that keeps their bones in place. Without hatred they would collapse and never get up again. The wind would make them disappear. All that would remain is the moaning of their wives in the night. Listen to me, I have two sons. One is the hand, the other the fist. One takes, the other gives. One day it’s the one, another day the other. I beg you, don’t take them both from me.”
That was Tamara’s prayer the night she refused to fill the two baskets with oranges.
After the village school was destroyed by bombs, Tamara turned herself into a teacher. Every morning she sat the two boys down in the kitchen next to the fat pots with blackened necks, and took great pleasure in her new role. There was talk of relocating the school, but no one in the village could agree on where. For months, then, families carried on as best they could. Amed and Aziz didn’t complain. They liked being there in the fragrant kitchen, where bouquets of fresh mint hung from the ceiling along with strings of garlic. They even made progress. Amed’s writing improved, and Aziz, despite his hospitalization, took to his multiplication tables with greater confidence.
As the boys were out of books, one morning Tamara thought to make notebooks out of leftover wrapping paper, and they, little kitchen scribblers, blackened the creased pages of these odd volumes with their stories. The boys took to the game right away. Amed even invented a character who embarked on impossible adventures. He explored distant planets, dug tunnels in the desert, struck down undersea creatures. Amed called him Dôdi, and endowed him with two mouths, one very little and one very big. Dôdi used his little mouth to communicate with insects and microbes. He used his big mouth to strike fear into the monsters he battled. But Dôdi sometimes spoke with his two mouths at the same time. Then the words he pronounced were comically deformed, creating new words and jumbled sentences that made the little apprentice writers laugh. Tamara took enormous pleasure in this. But after the night of the bombing and the death of their grandparents, those makeshift notebooks told only sad and cruel stories. And Dôdi went silent.
A week after the visit of the men in the jeep, the distant voice of Zahed came to Amed and Aziz in the kitchen, where they were working, without much enthusiasm, at their notebooks. He was calling them from the orange grove, where he spent twelve hours a day pruning, watering, and checking every tree. But this wasn’t the hour when he stopped to rest. Amed and Aziz dropped their pencils and ran to join their father, anxious to know what he wanted. Tamara left the house. Zahed gestured for her to come as well. She shook her head and went back inside. Zahed insulted her in front of her sons, something he’d never done before. Amed and Aziz no longer recognized their father. And yet when he began to speak, his voice was calmer than usual.
“Observe, my sons, the purity of the light,” said he. “Lift your heads. Look, a single cloud is drifting in the sky. It’s very high and is slowly thinning out. In a few moments, it will be a mere thread dissolved in the blue. Look. You see, it no longer exists. All is blue. It’s strange. There’s no breeze today. The far-off mountain seems to be dreaming. Even the flies have stopped buzzing. All about us the orange trees are breathing in and out in silence. Why such calm, why such beauty?”
Amed and Aziz were silent.
“Halim. You know him? You don’t want to answer? I know that you’re acquainted with Halim. The other night, when Soulayed went silent, Halim’s father, Kamal, spoke to me. His voice was not as strong as that of Soulayed. He said to me: ‘Zahed, you have before you a great sinner. I do not deserve to be in your company. As Soulayed said, you are the worthy son of your father, Mounir, whose renown for a long time reached beyond the walls of his house. One must be in harmony with God to achieve what your father did with his two hands. How sad to look on his ruined house. How shameful. With what pain. Accept the poor prayers of the sinner I am. I strike my breast. I pray for the souls of your parents.’”
And Kamal, with his fist, had delivered three hard blows to his heart. Like this, Zahed asserted, reenacting in front of his sons Kamal’s gesture.
“Kamal also said to me: ‘God has blessed you twice, Zahed. Rejoice, that he has placed in your wife’s womb two such sons. My wife died giving birth to our only son. Halim is what God has given me that is most precious. Yet I struck him. Look, you can still see the marks on his face. I struck him when he told me what he had decided. I closed my eyes and I struck him as I would strike a wall. I closed my eyes because I could not have struck my son in the light of day. When I opened my eyes, I saw blood. I closed my eyes and I struck harder. I opened my eyes. Halim had not moved. He stood tall before me and his eyes were filled with red tears. May God forgive me. I am only a miserable sinner. I did not understand. I did not want to understand his decision.’”
“‘Now you understand your son’s decision,’ said Soulayed to Kamal before going to get the belt in his jeep.
“During Soulayed’s absence, Halim leaned toward me and spoke as if he were revealing a secret.
“‘Zahed, listen. Before my meeting with Soulayed, I cursed my mother. I cursed her because I did not die along with her. Why be born in a land that still seeks its name? I did not know my mother and I will never know my country. But Soulayed came to me. One day, he talked to me. He said: ‘I know your father, I go to his shop to have my boots resoled. Kamal is a good worker. He asks a fair price for his labor. But he’s an unhappy man. And you, his son, you are even more unhappy. Halim, to utter the word of God is not enough. I’ve watched you during prayers. Where is your strength? Why come to prostrate yourself among your brothers and beseech God’s name? Your mouth is as empty as your heart. Who wants your unhappiness, Halim? Who can profit from your lament? You’re already fifteen years old and you’ve done nothing with this life that God has offered you. In my eyes, you are worth no more than our enemies. Your softness weakens us and brings us shame. Where is your anger? I do not hear it. Listen to me, Halim: our enemies are dogs. They are like us, you think, because their faces are faces of men. That’s an illusion. Look at them with the eyes of your ancestors, and you’ll see what these faces are really made of. They are made of our death. In a single enemy face, you can see our annihilation a thousand times. Never forget this: every drop of your blood is a thousand times more precious than a thousand of their faces.”
“When Soulayed came back with the belt, silence had taken hold of the night,” said Zahed finally.
His two sons sat listening to him in the diaphanous shadow of the orange trees. Impressed by their father’s story, Amed and Aziz understood that life in the orange grove would never be the same again. It was the second time in just a few short days that Zahed had spoken to them so seriously, he who was sparing with his words. He rose painfully and lit a cigarette. He smoked slowly, and with each puff seemed to be turning over in his head thoughts that were weighty, tormented.
“Halim is going to die,” Zahed declared suddenly, butting out his cigarette. “At noon, when the sun is shining and at its zenith, Halim is going to die.”
Zahed sat down near the boys, and all three waited in silence for the sun to locate itself right over their heads. At noon, Zahed asked his sons to look at the sun. They did so. First their eyes screwed up. Then they were able to keep them open. They filled with tears. Their father stared into the sun longer than they did.
“Halim is near to the sun now.”
“Why?” asked Aziz.
“Dogs wearing clothes. Our enemies are dogs with clothes. They surround us. In the south, they have closed off our cities with walls of stone. That’s where Halim has gone. He crossed the frontier. Soulayed told him how. He passed through a secret tunnel. Then he climbed onto a crowded bus. At noon, he blew himself up.”
“But how?”
“With a belt of explosives, Aziz.”
“Like the one we saw?”
“Yes, Amed, like the one you saw in the bag. Listen to me carefully: Soulayed, before he left, came to me and whispered something in my ear. He said to me: ‘You have two sons. They were born at the foot of the mountain that closes off our land in the north. Few people know the secrets of this mountain as well as your two young sons. Have they not found a way to reach the other side? They’ve done it, no? You ask how I know that. Halim told me. And it’s your sons themselves who told Halim.’”
Having said that, Zahed suddenly grabbed his sons by their necks. He held Amed with his right hand, and Aziz with his left. He lifted them from the ground. It was as if he’d gone mad. Amed and Aziz felt as if the earth had begun to shake, as if the oranges around them were going to fall by the thousands from their branches.
“Is that the truth?” cried their father. “What did you tell Halim? What did you tell that boy who just blew himself up?”
Unable to speak, Amed and Aziz began to cry.
That night, Zahed came to their room. They were already in bed. He leaned over them. In the shadows, his body was a shapeless mass. He talked very softly. Asked if they were sleeping. They didn’t reply, but they weren’t sleeping. Zahed continued to whisper.
“My little men,” he said, “God knows what is in my heart. And you know too. You’ve always done me honor. You are brave sons. When the bomb fell on your grandparents’ house, you showed great courage. Your mother is very proud of you. But she doesn’t want to understand what is happening in our land. She doesn’t want to see the danger facing us. She’s very unhappy. She did not speak to Soulayed when he left. He’s an important man. She insulted him. She shouldn’t have done that. Soulayed will come back, you understand, he’ll come back to talk to you. Now sleep.”
He planted a kiss on Amed’s brow. Then on that of Aziz, as he had done at the hospital. When he left, the smell of him lingered in the room.
Zahed was right. Soulayed came back very soon. Amed instantly recognized the sound of the jeep. He ran out of the house. Soulayed gestured for him to approach. This time Soulayed was alone. He asked Amed:
“Are you Amed or Aziz?”
“I’m Amed.”
“Well, Amed, go and find your brother. I want to talk to both of you.” Amed went into the house. Aziz was not yet up. Because he’d been sick, his mother was letting him sleep. Amed shook him: “Hurry up, get dressed. Soulayed’s come. He wants to talk to us.”
Aziz opened his eyes wide, raised his eyebrows in surprise. He looked like a little dog.
“Did you hear what I said? Get going! I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“I’m coming,” his brother mumbled, still half-asleep. A few minutes later, Amed and Aziz approached the jeep, both excited and suspicious.
“What are you waiting for, get in,” Soulayed said to them, a smile on his lips. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to eat you.”
He shifted his machine gun into the backseat to make room for them beside him. When the jeep started up, Amed glimpsed his father in the orange grove. He moved toward the road and watched the jeep disappear into the distance.
Soulayed drove fast. The boys liked that. Aziz sat between Soulayed and his brother. No one talked. They left the road to take the dirt track leading to the mountain. The wind whistled. Blowing dust made their eyes burn. The boys saw the dead body of an animal. Soulayed avoided it with a jerk of the steering wheel. Amed asked what it was. Soulayed shrugged. A few minutes later, the jeep braked to a brutal halt. They could go no farther. The mountain rose up before them, blocking the horizon with its bluish mass. Soulayed got out of the jeep. Took a few steps.
“What’s he doing?” Amed asked his brother in a low voice.
Suddenly they heard the sound of water. Stifling his laughter, Aziz said, “He’s emptying his bladder.”
After what was to them a long wait, Soulayed came back and sat in the jeep. Lit a cigarette. Took a deep drag and pointed to the mountain, there in front of them.
