B007P4V3G4 EBOK Page 10

  'Mother,' the man said, his voice smothered because of her bosom.

  'Yes, my boy,' said the woman, 'mother's here, for a mother must always be prepared. I've got nothing to reproach myself with, I have.'

  At that moment the sparse light in the room was diminished by the appearance of two girls in the doorway; by their smell one could clearly tell how hot it was outside.

  The woman revived and said: 'Here're Anna and Maria from next door; they're just dropping by, you know what neighbours are like.'

  The young man shook hands with them and said how surprisingly easily he had been able to find the house again in the village, as if he hadn't been away. The girl called Anna took another step into the room so that her face was no longer so indistinct. She had a large, very sensuous mouth and her nose was no tiddler either, but her piggy little eyes looked kindly into the world.

  'I, on the contrary,' she said, 'am always afraid of losing my way, particularly in the evening, and I also have a fear of suddenly going blind and then falling into the river.'

  The young man laughed. 'Those who follow me shall not stumble in the dark. I do like the water, don't like swimming but like standing in it and going a bit wrinkly.'

  The girl Anna blushed, cast down her eyes and whispered: Now there's a thing.' Then she turned to the woman and asked: 'Shall I give the room he sleeps in a bit of a going-over, and air and make his bed?'

  'Fine,' the woman said, measuredly, 'I know my place.'

  That evening, when the young man had already gone upstairs, Anna dropped by a moment, out of interest, but many questions hovered unuttered in the room.

  Would you mind taking him some fresh water?' the woman asked. 'You have young legs and if there's anything else you need, tell me.'

  The girl Anna went upstairs, knocked, stepped inside and set down the water on the table. Then she settled on a chair beside the bed. The young man sat on the only other chair, at the table, and he stared at the water in the bowl.

  The garret room was in part situated above the stables, the smells from which penetrated with great force through the gaps in the floor. These were the smells of a summer's evening so balmy and full of promise as only exists apocryphally. Purple, the evening dashed against the window, jasmine scent and hay-heat hung heavily upon the air and the grievous snorting and stamping of the bull downstairs was clearly discernible. Brightly gleamed the eye of the mother behind the keyhole and, behind a few gaps further along, those of the neighbour and the lass, Maria. What they saw they slurped in greedily, but there was painfully little. Perhaps both knew they were being watched by glittering eyes behind the wall, but they showed no signs of shame or irritation. The room was neat, its furnishing extremely spartan; the bed, however, had been highly aired and made with care, even more reason to crawl away together for a right old cuddle and let farmers make the hay. But no; the young man spoke: not quite audibly, he told of very sad things, for the girl Anna drooped more and more, with hunched back and shoulders and despondent hands in her lap. The mother, not wishing to let any opportunity pass in order not to have anything to reproach herself with later on, fetched her lute from downstairs and strummed a soft and sloping song. 'I hang my helmet on the brazen knob.'

  Both youngsters were well equipped for an hour of cheeky bliss: he possessed the attractiveness of someone who comes from far away, that of the stranger, and she smelled so strongly of fresh honeysuckle, it hurt; moreover, the bull boomed downstairs on the cobbles and steamed like Pan himself. The young man, however, just held forth, a strange light resting on his pointed little skull. He pointed upwards with his knobbly finger as if he was probing the chart of heaven, modelled all kinds of strange things in the air, and meanwhile the little virgin Anna blinked away tear upon tear from her little eyes. The mother even appeared in the room for a moment, jazzing up the lighting with a little red table lamp, setting down a pitcher of red wine on the table and a dish of peppered beef.

  In the end, virgin Anna left the loft, sobbing, stumbling down the stairs, squeaking with misery, and she cried: 'To what do I owe this?'

  Who cares!' the mother cried after her, triumphant, 'you can't get used to it soon enough, my girl: children ... nothing but misery.'

  It came to pass that a great drought arrived in the land, and to such an extent that even a camel standing stock-still threw up a cloud of dust. The earth around the village had been scorched brown-grey, and when the sun had reached its highest point, tongues of flame flickered in the sky. The struggle for water had of old been part of daily toil. The inhabitants of the village owed their chabot head to it: that little pointed skull, the little eyes close together, their nose the size of a sugar beet, and those coarsegrubbing gobs. The songs in the village were full of shade, milk, the rustle of leaves and glugging water. There was even a man who had made himself perfectly at one with the dryness of the soil; it had become the objective of all his considerations, not God, but the withered, asphyxiating plain of scorched shale and sand. 'This earth does not cease to give,' he hummed on the little market, 'tender meat, fine milk, living water, and moreover she also bears the poet on her back.'

  Where there is scarcity, there is also the spiv, the crafty one, the canny devil; no milk he has butter; no his lamp bums as brightly as the first day; has all water he still perspires, untroubled, speaks with moist mouth and things gurgle in his stomach, juicily.

  In the village there is a narrow, steep, quiet little backwater where the sun always shines, but half way up there is a small sidealley where there is a great to-do. Here the water trade is conducted; the atmosphere is tense but lively, and it is a fascinating sight to hear the turnip-heads from the village and its surroundings shout and bid there with cracked lips and parched voices.

  The water trade is a murky business, for how the cool water gets there into the cistern deep underground is incomprehensible to the thirsty nit: this is the spiv's, the canny devil's secret. It was whispered that the water owner had connections with little clouds which only watered his garden, whispers too about a basin, that happened to be underneath his house, to which the water flowed and dripped, unstoppably, from far and wide, and where it stayed just as cool as in winter. Whatever the case, the trader had his house extended and purchased white camels with small, precious carpets in the stirrups and golden knobs on the saddles.

  Until the real drought came, the drought within a drought which made the earth crack and snap to its very core. Sudden splits and rifts boomed through the rocky ground and the price of the obligatory wooden bowls which had not cracked rose to unknown heights. But the price of water, of course, rose most of all, indeed, it even rose while being passed from one to the next so that the thirsty had to pass it on, from one to the next, incessantly, and they finally succumbed, as dry as St Nicholas's bottom. The chabot skulls mummified, nose and cheeks withered, all hope drained dry from the eyes.

  When their plight was at its worst, the rumours started: there'd been thunder, it was said, in the mountains on the horizon, there was even said to be a waterfall there, free and open in the sky, just like that. This last one was not to the rich water merchant's liking and he would no longer give water to ones who believed such tales. Until he happened to have a visit from a feverish young man with a hollow look in his eyes, who told him about a source out there in the desert from which water bubbled up inexhaustibly, a spot blessed with henna flowers, vine bushes, apple trees and the occasional gazelle. As if by a miracle, the merchant was convinced. 'Show me the way there,' he shouted, chalk-white with greed. He quickly gathered some onions, goat's cheese and a few flasks of aqua, and off they went, looking back furtively time and again. For days they made their way through sand and cinder, the landscape, naked and drab, unchanging so that it was as if they were rooted to the same spot, for ever, and yearning. The sun beat down, godless and scorching, on the pointed head of the merchant; camel and companion, crumpling, were left behind. The merchant could no longer speak, for his tongue tapped to and fro in his mou
th like a twig; the last drop of urine, squeezed out with much effort, carved through his member like a red-hot knife.

  The grotto he reached with his last, faltering steps, and the strange figure he found there did not seem to be bothered by anything at all: he munched some locusts, cheerfully spitting out legs round about and appeared to be in fine fettle. His was the primal posture of the spirit: down, splat, on his bum, the thighs carelessly spread wide, the hands scalloped before the cosmic. With intense compassion he addressed the sly dog, having first refreshed him extensively with cool water from a flask he calmly and generously brought forth from the dark of the grotto.

  'I am the source,' the man said, 'mark you, I'm not saying he is the source, or we are the source, or them's the source, no ... I'm saying that I am the source. Nor am I saying that I was the source, am it perhaps or once ever will be, none of all those: I say that I am the source. And I'm not on about the door or the gate or the fence, no, I'm on about the source and then not just any old source, but the source. What sayest thou to this?' -- - - - - - - - - - - -- - -

  The merchant, bewildered, pointed to his mouth which still had sand and dust panting in and out of it, and again he was given water, copiously, without any contribution as regards cost, and then the word goes down a treat, it does.

  Thus, to everyone's disappointment, the man returned to the chabot village with a spring in his step and, as all and sundry thought, firmly intent on squeezing out every last drop again. But no, this turned out quite differently: the merchant had become a man of the word. Where previously they had bitten each other's ears off to get to the front during trading, chabotteurs now congregated in all tolerance to listen to the merchant, during which they would be handed a little bowl of water: they just couldn't suspend their disbelief for a moment. 'Blessed be they who quench for free,' said the waterman and he let the words roll in his mouth, round and round, with relish, 'for they shall inherit a kingdom.'

  'Aha,' the chabot-tops thought cunningly, 'there you have it,' and their eyes moved a little closer together still. But no matter how distrustful they were and continually bore in mind being hauled back to bone-dry reality, the man appeared to be firmly decided to share out his supply of water, to give away his riches, and in so doing to tell about his encounter in the desert. He went round the village like an uncomfortable presence, greeting everybody, smiling in an unnatural manner, and now and then he laid his hand in blessing upon the head of an old dolt or a playing child, who then would making a quick get-away for that matter.

  What precisely did actually happen?' the elders asked, repeatedly, and one evening he addressed them. 'I will tell you of this in parables,' he said, 'for otherwise it looks just ordinary and this it is not, not at all. Listen: I found the master sitting at the entrance to his grotto, deep in thought, pondering, and I saw that his little, pear-shaped head was stuffed full of choicest thoughts and noble passions. He was sitting on a stool covered in gleaming pink silk, like at court, his nose was nicely ripe in shape and his large, broad lips made a pale oval shape in his black stubbly beard. An art connoisseur, by the looks of him, a man from the East cloaked in cool white silk and with a rosette in his buttonhole. A man who would go far; I saw this in no time at all. In front of him, in a marble courtyard with columns, fat white women rolled about the floor, and from time to time, when he had a refined thought, he would, with an elegant gesture, measure a breast or nipple between his thumb and index finger. Occasionally he would caress their skin which was smooth as silk and gleamed like a mirror because of scented oils, and then he would stare out across the wilderness with eyes like gelatine, moist and dark, and very narcotic in the depths. 'Women,' he then said, 'they are eternity and spirit. Amen, 'n over-and-out, folks.'

  'Did I already mention the plaster eagle, his opera hat in his right hand, his youngsters: a tailor, a cook, a gravedigger, a nurse and a few more. I knelt before him in the dust but I had so many things to ask him all at once that I ended up being a little lost. When he went into the grotto to have forty winks during the hot noontime hour, I did see that his legs were a little on the short side.'

  'Tell us more,' cried the elders excitedly, 'tell us all.'

  'One evening,' the merchant said, cosily contented, and after a thoughtful swig, 'we were sitting together, the lights had been extinguished and everybody felt themselves to be in the safe hands of the others, some way or other. It was a dreadfully stormy night, lightning flashing incessantly and unceasing thunder all round. The trees groaned in the garden and in the distance we heard the sea booming against the rocks and waves rolling in, tall as houses.'

  'The seat cried the elders, 'where did that suddenly come from, where actually was that grotto?'

  Refined, the merchant raised an already somewhat pale, thin hand and said: 'These are but parables; books and verses, as it were.'

  'Continue,' the elders said.

  'All had assembled in the hall!

  'In the hall? Now which hall would this be then?'

  'In the hall of parables. The house stood in a forest and in the blue light of the streaks of lightning we were well able to see one another's faces. Though heaven was enraged, we did not fear because we were together and our joy consisted of the fact that otherwise we would have been afraid. I looked at my mother's, my father's sweet face jolting out in the light, for they were all there too.'

  'They are dead and buried,' the elders cried.

  'In a manner of speaking,' smiled the merchant. 'Next day the weather was splendid, the boat floated through the shadows the trees cast on the water. We saw the fish fanning out, stones distorting in the waves and the swaying of all kinds of sea grass, red, green ... And the master taught the while. 'Don't you be frightened now,' he said, 'for what is truth, after all.'

  'But the message,' cried the elders crotchetily, 'something to cling on to.'

  'To one it's this, to another it's the next,' the merchant said, 'but he who hears truly cannot but accept it. To me, the word was 'Refresh those who thirst, and no more whingeing.'

  When the water from the cistern began to run out, the skulls became more pointed, the ears more deaf. But then, the chabot village does not care much for the word proclaimed; the village was more one for the whisper, for muttering from behind a hand, speech during which one sees no lips move. There came a time when the merchant was standing alone on his box and, beard peaky and unkempt, was speaking of salvation, cleansing water and all things like that, and soon he was only a babbling greybeard with no possessions at all, and they had plenty like them in the village already. Moreover, a little further along, the water trade had enjoyed a lively rebirth; where the new merchant got the water from was a mystery, but he had the stuff and he was a very severe man who went to extremes.

  Thus the army of thirsty ones was reduced by one and augmented by one, and therefore not much had changed. When, with some malicious pleasure, they asked the merchant reduced to beggary who was also waiting in the burning sun for his little drop, what he now thought of the word, he said: 'I was with the master, not you: one cannot crimp those who are absent.'

  It came to pass that the youth opened his eyes in his foster parents' house in town. 'Lovely weather,' he thought, 'some day, this,' and while he sat up, half asleep, in his bed, the night birds withdrew into the dark niches of his brain. The floral, predominantly pink pattern of the curtains unfolded itself slowly and slid back together again under the slight pressure of the morning breeze; now and then he would see the sharp sunlight on the window sill for a moment.

  In the house scattered noises arose, first signs of life on this splendid summer morning: a scrap of radio, a door slamming, the shower turned on. The youth listened to the wind in the garden for a while, and though no one was watching him or sticking their head round the door, he went to lie down again and meticulously pretended to be asleep. But there were more and more noises, on the street now too, and he decided to sit up on the edge of his bed, after all, where he scratched both armpits and h
ead and looked at-his feet. 'Some day, this' - -- - - - - -- - - -

  Thoughtfully, he stood up and then walked across to the wash stand to polish and gurgle away sleep once and for all. Washing and splashing, he was flooded with summery resolutions, so much so he tried to push open the window a little further with wet, foamy hands so as not to prevent anything from flooding in, fully and unhindered. He also stuck his damp head out of the window and, morning drunk, he looked around: everything sparkled with dew. He twisted his sleep-stiff neck as far as possible and let the light plunge down into his eyes so that it hurt, then he slowly went inside again and continued dressing. Or so he thought, that is, but with a sudden start he knew that he had been standing at the window for quite a while, drowsing; in a great feeling of happiness he had healed the sick, taken away pain, advanced money, watered a dog, saved children from a pond, and a tremendous treacle eye, black with gratitude, stared at him so that his own eyes became moist because of it.

  'It's all ready,' somebody cried from downstairs and simultaneously the scent of toast and coffee curled its way upstairs. Cups chinked sharply, a giggle struck him painfully, a laugh cracked hard and hoarse. He knew what awaited him downstairs, he already knew the jostling, the punches and jokes, and he knew he did not want to enter this day, but wished to stay alone to preserve himself carefully.